Hey! So this week has been good. We had a baptism on Saturday. I
baptized a little kid named Gomes Pedro Lopes. He goes by Piezinho though..
it went really well. Then his mom and sister got baptized too and we
baptized one other guy on Saturday as well. So that was a total of 4 new
members in the branch. Then on Sunday we confirmed all of them. I had to
confirm Piezinho in Portuguese.. I was pretty scared but managed to
get though it. So ya that was good. Also this week we found hot water. I
guess it’s a little unpredictable so ya. But this I did take a couple
hot showers so that was a nice change. We had zone conference this
week. It was good. The President speaks in English all the time its nice
for me. I guess its probably because he doesn’t really speak any
Portuguese at all.. then the Zone leaders did some training and then the
AP’s did some more training. It all went well. I like a lot of the
Elders. We usually see a lot of each other every P-Day. Today we’re going
to the beach here in Beira to just go and hang out. Some of the other
Elders have arranged to have fruit there and some other stuff I guess
so that will be fun. There are 5 other guys that come out of the MTC
with me up here so I get to hang out with them a lot. Its fun. I’m gonna
try and send some pictures today but I’ve just been having a hard
time attatching them to the e-mails. We don’t really hear anything out
here. Not much contact from the outside world so no, we haven’t heard
from the other elders in the MTC. They’ve only got 2 or 3 weeks left
though so we’ll be meeting up with them pretty soon. But ya, we
didn’t find out that President Faust died until that Monday.. you would
think that would be something we’d know about, but Its just really
hard to get news out to us I guess. So ya, the only contact we have out
here is really on P-days when I e-mail you guys. That’s probably good
though. Less distractions. We live with 2 other elders. Our house is
really unique. I’m in my 1st transfer and am completely new. Then my
companion is a new district leader so ya.. then the other companionship in
our house is a guy named Jensen. He was in the MTC with me and is 1
transfer ahead of me so technically he’s still considered new. Then His
senior companion is from Brazil, is 24 years old and is only in his
3rd transfer. So our house is increadably unexperienced. Then also the 4
of us make up the entire Munhava district. Where as most districts are
made up of 3 or 4 houses with 4-6 Elders in them so ya, a little
weird. But its fine. And we actually live in another district so the other
district is semi-close. We live in the Beira 2 area. So ya. We don’t
even live in our area. But I like it. Things have been going really
well. Portuguese is still hard but its coming little by little.
No, I haven’t been robbed or anything close to that yet. Its really
not dangerous out here at all. People have a way distorted picture of
Africa. So really, don’t worry. Most people out here are scared of
white people. So ya. No body messes with us. it is kinda funny though, all
the Elders out here are huge! Like most of them are way tall. I would
say my height is average up here, if not a little on the short side.
Elder Lundgren Is one of the smallest guys in the zone. The average height
must be somewhere up around 6.2 or 6.3 so ya, its pretty fun playing
sports with the guys because they’re all pretty big and really
athletic (most of them..). so it’s a lot of fun in that way.
I just checked out the website. It looks way cool so thanks. Ya
everything looks fine. Andrew did a really good job. I’ll try and send pics
again today.. we’ll see how it goes. You can put my e-mail if you
want, or yours and they could e-mail you and you could copy it to your
e-mails.. but ya whatev, thanks!
Well, everything is good, miss you guys and love you!
Elder Okazaki