Hey!
Hope everything is going well. This week is going good. It has been a
really fun p-day. We all went to the beach and played ultimate Frisbee.
So much fun except I’m pretty sure I got burned really bad.. we’ll
see tomorrow. This morning we went around and bought a bunch of stuff
to send home with the Baileys.. hope you guys like it. We’ll try and
call the hotel and get in touch with them tomorrow night. This week has
went by pretty slowly. Not a whole lot goin on. I’ll send you a
letter next week where to send some stuff.. if you guys really want to keep
some stuff let me know. A couple things are supposed to go to some
certain people specifically. But a lot of the stuff is up for grabs. Also
if you like anything a lot I can still get a lot of the stuff here. All
of the stuff is hand made but they got a lot of different variations of
stuff. So ya. But this week has been good. We’ve taught a lot of
lessons. Yesterday we had district meeting. President Packard was up here
as well as one of the members of the 1st quorum of the 70. He says he
knows Nana Okazaki. Elder Colliker.. the spellings wrong but that’s
who it was. I think he said he was in the Priesthood dept. when Nana was
in the General Relief Society Presidency. It was pretty good though.
Conference was so good. They focus by far was family’s. and a lot of it
focused on how guys should treat their wives because to be honest
women out here aren’t really worth much. It was also appropriate because
the first temple trip is about to happen here this week. 30 people from
Beira are going to the temple in South Africa next week. So that’s
pretty exciting. But it was a really really good conference. Plus
President Packard released the old presidency and called a new one. The care
for life guy that’s picking the Bailey’s up is actually the new
district president. That ought to be good to finally have a Mozambiquen in
there. The old guy was Brazilian.
One kinda cool thing that happened this week is yesterday we were
walking in our area and saw a this crowd of people standing around watching
something. So we checked it out and it turned out to be this tribal
thing. We watched for a little while and it was pretty neat. I ended up
taking a couple pictures and actually got a video of the thing. I
don’t have enough time right now to send them seeing as its already 3:30
and we need to go shopping still and pull money out of the bank. We’ve
been having a problem today with ATM’s here in Beira so we’ll see
how that turns out. I’m sure it will be fine. You’ll just have to
wait till next week to see them.. sorry. But ya everything else is going
well. Another thing that happened this is that one night one of the
recently converted members was taking care of their really sick sister so
we offered to give her a blessing. Well Elder Pierson gave her a
blessing and then a couple days later she died.. we have yet to talk to the
recent converts so we’ll see how that goes.
The new kid in the house is pretty nice. He’s from Utah too.. he’s
a little more quiet but a nice kid all around. I feel bad for Elder
Vieira though (the only Brazilian in our house). This new kid doesn’t
understand really anything Elder Vieira is saying so its kinda hard for
them and then Elder Pierson doesn’t really like Elder Vieira and so
he only talks to him when he really has to or is in a really good mood
and so I’m really the only one who talks to the poor guy. He doesn’t
speak English so he can’t understand what we’re saying so I think
he kinda feels lonely sometime. He’s a really good district leader
and I like him a lot so I enjoy talking to him. It helps my language
skills and I’m sure he enjoys talking to someone other than
investigators.
So today I also bought a turtle shell.. its really cool and I’ve
never seen one here before. However, I’m pretty sure that they’re
illegal… I don’t know for sure though. You’ll have to let me know on
that.. I got if for a pretty good price. The guy wanted 1000 meticais
for it but I got if for 500 ($20). so you’ll have to let me know if
its illegal to ship it into the country.. the turtle wasn’t like
poached, it was dead so they took the shell. So ya. Maybe that’s just my
way of justifying buying a turtle shell. But I really want to put like
some sort of glaze coating on the inside and use it as a sweet bowl. But
anyway that won’t be coming home with the Baileys. But ya, things are
going great out here. Its starting to get a little hotter but nothing
too too bad yet. Well, happy Halloween! You’ll have to let me know
how everything goes next week. Good luck to Big O being home alone. Hope
that goes well too. Well, love you guys and miss you!

Elder Okazaki

PS.. I never did get that picture on USC’s website or where ever it
was. The hockey one..