Well, another week has come and gone. Crazy how fast time is going. This week has gone fairly well. We did two divisions this week with District Leaders, which both went well. We also were able to work a little bit on our zone conference presentation. We tried to be as creative as we possibly could because most of the time the zone leaders and assistants just get up and give a presentation for an hour, where all they really do is click through slides and talk. So Smoot and I had the idea of doing a "choose your own adventure" presentation. If you remember the kids books Goosebumps, and where you would read to a certain page and then you would have to make a choice, depending on that choice, you'd flip to a certain page in the book and continue reading. Well we have three recently returned missionaries here, which we used to be investigators, and so we filmed a bunch of little clips of them and have a whole story line and clips of how to react, depending on what the zone decides. So hopefully that will be interesting for them. Basically we will play the first clip, and in that clip, they'll introduce a doubt or some sort of trigger and so then we'll stop, and the zone will have to make a decision as to what to do and so their decision will decide what clip we play next, and go until we get to the end of the lesson. Smoot and I are really excited about it. So we were able to work on that a little bit.

Crazy how mom is finding all of these connections to Care for Life. Turns out that they are going through a really hard time right now. Care for life sponsors a bunch of families and these families make up a bunch of goals and if they accomplish their goals they get rewards from Care for Life for accomplishing that goal.  Care for Life has these people called field officers who are the ones responsible for evaluating the progress of these people. Some of them have been caught taking materials and so have been released. The worst part is that some were church members. The missionaries are holding a lot of the church positions because of this. 

Well, President mentioned again in my letter that I've been in Beira for a long time and so I think it’s sadly coming to an end. Maputo will be a nice change and all, but it will be hard to leave. I already know everyone here; there are plenty of places I haven't served yet so anything could happen. If I could choose I think I'd go to Marromeu. I'd like to be really in the jungle for my last couple of transfers. We'll just find out here, in a couple of weeks and then I'll go where I'm told.

Sounds like the vacation to California went well. I'm glad Steve had a good B-day. Tell Greg that I'm super bummed that the Coog's lost, only time on my mission that I'm glad I wasn't at home for something... I think Elder Buckner is secretly excited because that means the Coog's might need his help when he gets back. He's going back a few weeks early for football so he only has like 2 months left. He's down in Maputo right now and training too. Well, thanks for the letters. Hope you guys have a good week!!

Elder Okazaki.