Hey!
This week has been hot! Oh man, yesterday after church was so hot. We
had a couple things to do after church so Elder Buckner went one way
with a branch missionary and I went the other with another branch
missionary. I went and dropped a Book of Mormon off to someone but wow was it hot. I have a little temperature gage on my bag and it was reading about a 105 or so. Then with the humidity too. Oh boy. Plus yesterday was fast Sunday and so by the time church ended we had been without water for about 21 hours. Not the funnest experience of my mission but hopefully that BOM will do some good. It was nice to get back in the habit of teaching this week.
New Years was fun. We just stayed in our house and another two missionaries came over and we just stayed up talking till midnight then went out on our balcony to watch little kids blowing up fireworks. It was super crazy. They were shooting bottle rockets at each other and
M-80’s were everywhere along with alcohol. I’m honestly surprised
no one died. It was wild. A lot of fun. We’re on the 3rd floor and so we had a pretty good view of things. So that was nice. Then the next day we got together at the church had a big lunch, played board games and then we got to watch Remember the Titans. It was super good. A lot of fun for us. I feel bad sometimes though because the movie was in English and so the Brazilians couldn’t understand. That happens
to them a lot. Then after that it was back to work. It was a good working week. We had a lot of good lessons and gave another baptismal date. His name is Joaquim. He’s a super good guy and is just nuts. All he reads is the Bible and he can pretty much quote the entire thing. It’s really amazing. The language is coming. You’re right about the gradual thing. It has come very gradually. Now however, I feel pretty comfortable. I’m totally fine being on my own with natives and so things are going good. I still have a lot of learning to do but things are going well.
Oh man. I can’t believe that the elections are already going on. That’s just nuts to me. You’ll have to keep me updated. It’ll be interesting to see how that turns out. Nuts about Kenya. I think Africa has always had problems like that; just no one knows about them or cares enough to pay attention.
Also, Happy B-Day Will!! Man, I can’t believe he’s a teenager already. That just seems nuts to me. Hope he has a good B-day and all goes well. Well, Good luck with everything. I think that’s about all from here. Miss you all and Love you!

Elder Okazaki