Hey!

Sorry about yesterday.. It was a holliday up here in Beira so we had to
change our p-day till today.. sorry about that… But ya. Things are
great. I’m doing well. We have a Baptism this Saturday and I’m
really excited. Way excited. We’ve got one guy who’s 18 named Jo. He’s
really a cool kid, then a family. Beatrize is the mother with her two
kids Lucia (18) and Pizinho (11). One of the final questions we ask
them before they’re to get baptized is who they want to Baptize them.
Elder Lundgren will Baptize 3 of them but Pizinho asked me to baptize
him. I’m way excited. So I’ll baptize Pizinho this Saturday. Its gonna
be a good day. My Birthday was good. Way good. The 18th we worked all
day. Such a long day. I cleaned our entire chapel that morning in
preparation for church the next day. Our chapel is just an old store and not
very big but when you’re the only one cleaning it takes a while.
Elder Lundgren had presidency meeting so he couldn’t help. But ya so for
my actual birthday we didn’t do anything, but I did get a call from
President Packard and the missionary couple who are up here in Beira to
supervise so that was super nice. Then I got your package yesterday.
Everything made it. It was so nice. I seriously think the stickers
helped. It was way good. I didn’t look like it had been opened or
anything. So ya. Way good. I’ve gotten addicted to starburst though because
of that… Then today we went over to a senior missionary couples house
and sister spendlove made us breakfast then we cooked a box of brownies
and it was so good. Me and 3 other Elders ate them in a matter of
minutes. Then just kinda hung out there for a while. They’re really nice.
I like them a lot. Um, in answer to dad’s questions..
1. I don’t think those things for my shoes are going to help.
Apparently when it rains we’re in water up to our wastes.. so I’m gonna
say no to those but thanks.
2. the language is good. I’m can understand everything Elder Lundgren
says in the lessons and feel that I can speak pretty well during
lessons. But I’m still having a hard time picking out what the locals are
saying. I can pick out their words now though. Before it was just kinda
a jumble of sounds but now I can tell what they’re saying. Its just
I’ll be following the conversaion then I’ll hear a word I don’t
know and get lost, but its coming. I think I know a lot more than I
think I know. If that makes sense..
3. food: no worries there. We eat fine. Just not a whole lot of luxury
items. Like cheese. Soooo expensive. Like ridiculous and other things
like cerial is expensive and juice and stuff like that. But we eat
well. There’s plenty of food, the only thing that limits me is my cooking
skills, which are pretty much non-existant. But I’m learning. So ya,
my favorite items in the house right now is that 3-lbs jar of peanut
butter and those packets of propel that I took with us. The water is
good and pure but its got a funny taste to it sometimes. But no worries,
we eat well.
4. Munhava.. ya, I don’t really know where we are on the map. I just
know that most of the houses are made of sheet-metal and sticks and
there’s one neighborhood of concreate houses that is our “nice/rich”
area. One road in the area is named: Cruz Gomez.. so ya.. but I like
the area here so far.

So one problem we have here is how stupid the people are. That may seem
kinda blunt but there’s really know other way of putting it. Most
women can’t read and Portuguese is a second language around here so
they don’t know it very well so sometimes they don’t know big words
like atonement and things like that. Also they just aren’t a smart
people. They’re logic makes no sense. I takes them a while to understand
that if the BOM is true then Joseph Smith was a prophet. Also those
that do read the book, read it but don’t pray to know if its true, they
don’t understand they need to do that. Every one here has the
attitude that “Its all good”. I mean that’s good in some ways but its so
frustrating in others. Like wow. I can’t stand it. They think all
church’s are true and that everyone teaching “good things” and
don’t understand about eternal salvation. Plus we have a huge problem
with home teaching visits and visiting teaching. Especially visiting
teaching because none of the women are self motivated. Women really do
nothing in this country except make babies and cook. Really its ridiculous.
So leadership doesn’t exist in women. It doesn’t help that men
don’t understand the role of women either. We try to make the understand
that they’re wife needs to be an equal partner but they are just so
in they’re Mozambiquan culture mindset.
So Remember Pres. Wallace.. ha, well, I’ve heard some stories about
him. He is way more important than we knew when we met him. I guess
he’s one of the most trusted mission presidents in the church. Like
he’s the “go-to mission president” when the Quarum of the 12 need
something done… Aparently when they first opened this mission under the
supervision of the South African mission they had some real problems.
Like the missionaries that got sent down here were just huge slaps. They
had a 2 year vacation. The guy supervising was a slap too.. the big
thing at first was baptizing. All the missionaries would baptize. The
problem was though that they didn’t prepare any one well enough so
retention was terrible. They would baptize and then a couple months later the
people would go in active. So they didn’t have any stability. Plus
the church was just handing out cash. There was one senior couple down
here called the Thomas’ that would give tons of the churches money to
anyone with a sad story so people would come to church for that so the
church was just losing money like crazy retention was terrible the
native missionaries we’re getting sent home right and left so the called
Wallace down here to fix it. And he did a lot of it. They stopped
calling native missionaries to here and President Wallace was able to fix a
lot of the problem so that was good. But now what we’re doing is
starting from scratch. Like all the previous missionaries didn’t do
anything. They just destroyed the name of the church and made a lot of the
branches weaker. So now we’re start all over. Most of the braches are
still pretty week and we don’t have a whole lot of help. If the
missionaries weren’t here the church would fall apart. There’s some
places where the church has branches but we don’t have missionaries
(because we simply don’t have enough guys, we only 62 missionaries down
here..) that are getting closed. They’re shutting down 2 branches
because they’re just two week and sending the remaining members over to
another one to try and reinforce that other branch and make it stronger.
So ya, the branches are just weak. It’s a good experience though.
Once this place because stronger it’s gonna explode. Right now we have
pretty strict rules on who we can baptize and teach. We can’t baptize
anyone under 18. in orientation they explained why. And It makes a lot
of sense too. They compared us to hunters. They said right now we need
to be hunter and hunt for families. We can’t be fishers in the sense
that fisher take whatever bites their lines and hunters actively search
for a specific type of prey. But we need to be hunters to find
families. Families are the only thing that will stabilize the church here. We
need good strong branches full of families first and then we can start
“fishing” for others. But the church down here is in its infancy
and you can really tell that. “Mormon culture” doesn’t exist.
They’re no real bond between the members. So its frustrating in that
manner but if we can just get strong families then the church will explode.
Well I’m going on too long. Thanks for the package and the cards
and everything. It was a really great b-day. Hope all is well it is down
here. Love you all and miss you!

Elder Okazaki

PS. It would probably be best if you guys could only write one e-mail.
The internet is really slow and it takes time to go back and forth.. so
maybe one e-mail from everyone on Sunday night or something. Even if
franny and the family wants to e-mail you and then you stick it on the
bottom of your weekly e-mail that would be great. Make my life a little
easier. But I love hearing from you guys. I haven’t read any e-mails
yet so I’ll print them out today and read them soon. Thanks again and
love you all!