This week has been another good one. We had a mission tour this week. Elder Parmley was here. It was a really good meeting and went really well. I really like Elder and Sister Parmley. Currently he's serving as the Area President. This week sure has been busy for President Packard. On Wednesday we had a mission tour here, then on Friday they had it down there, then on Sat. and Sunday they had district conference for the Maputo district. Apparently President Packard was busy entertaining 2 General Authorities and over the weekend Elder Koelleker (1st councilor in the area presidency) flew in to join President Parmley. I'm just glad I'm up here in Beira. So ya, it is weird that we've been out for over a year now. It went by really fast. Really fast. I have a feeling that the second half will go by even faster too. So we'll see. It honestly just feels like another week though. I can't believe it. I have to remind myself that I've been out a year now. It has been a good year. This week we've done a lot of branch work. It’s been good. We've been making a lot of callings. Hopefully the branch will be a lot stronger now.
Also, something you'll be glad to hear, I got your package. Thanks for all of that stuff. It will be great to have. I read all those articles. That’s so crazy how all of those kids that I played hockey with are all going to the NHL. Ruegsegger is the star at DU. Now Bachman is the talk at CC. and Drayson is too low on the NHL draft pick, Nutini is playing for DU. Crazy. What happened to the other guys? It kind of makes me wonder what would have happened if we would have moved up to Minnesota and I played for Shattuck too? Well, I'm just excited to come home and maybe go to some DU vs. CC games and watch those two play. And then maybe even watch some of those guys in the NHL. It ought to be interesting to see where those guys go.
Elder Brown and the rest of the district are doing well. We had interviews with President this week and President said he wants to divide Beira 1 and create a Beira 3. I'm not so sure about that move. We were barely able to scrape up 1 branch president and we still don’t have an elder’s quorum president. He wants to do it about the time we're going home though, so we'll see on how that goes. I guess that’s about a year out and so I told the district about the Presidents agenda and added the fact that we need a branch president for Beira 3, and so that means we're going to have to baptize him now. We'll just have to wait and see I guess.
Today we'll all be going out to Inhamezwa to have a little party for our year mark, since there's so many of us, the entire zone is going to celebrate the year mark with us. We'll go out and it ought to be a pretty good time. I'm pretty excited about it all. It ought to be really fun. I think pretty much the entire zone is going to be out there. So that’s our day. Thanks for package and the letters. I was sick to my stomach when I read that the Wings are going to win again. I'm glad I'm in Africa and too far a way to witness it. Well, thanks again. Thanks for the letter and talk to you in another week!

Elder Okazaki