Masarap ang Aso!

First off sorry to everyone for not emailing last week...I know you all missed it so much haha! Ha Mom you're prob the only one who reads theseanyways haha. Well this past week was really crazy. I guess I'll start off on a sad note. Last week we had an awesome Recent Convert we have been teaching pass away. Her name is Juliet Salvan. We got pretty close and actually she was my first lesson in field. I think she was 55 years old, still pretty young, but she was diagnosed with a rare cancer 5 years ago. She wasn't supposed to live even one month, but made it 5 years. I'll never forget her. It has rained here everyday this past week, but I'm still not sick of rain. I love it, while my companion and the other Pinoy Elders hate it. On a good note we picked up a lot of investigators this week. One of them is the Dongaban family, 4 little girls and their parents. The father is actually in Manila right now but they are still accepting us and a really excited about the Gospel. The wife is the sister of our other investigator who we are baptizing this next week! They are awesome really! Both of these people are from our main area we work out of called Gumang. Lets just say this place is an "Investigator Goldmine". Its right next to the sea too, so we get to walk on the beach to some of our investigators. I love the beach here, even though its not the prettiest one I've ever seen haha. The real exciting thing I want to share is what the title of my email says...Dog is Delicious. Need I say more. I got offered it at a party in Gumang with all of the villagers. I was watching them bark it out when one of the members asked me if I wanted to eat some. Well I didn't want to upset anyone so I guess now you could say I'm offically Filipino. Well maybe not quite yet, still working on the brown skin thing but I'm getting there! Another good story was when me and my comp and one of our ZL's were waiting for the other ZL to finish interviewing our investigator who is getting baptized this saturday. We were sitting down outside the house and these 12 year old girls came walking by and started playing 20 questions with us. There was this other little girl, maybe 7 years old, and she kept staring at me. This has become quite normal for me so I didn't think anything of it. After awhile she started to get real close to me. She got right up in my face which is also normal because I thought she was gonna play with my hair or something but all of the sudden she starts to squeeze her lips to together. Its a good thing I got quick reflexes, or I might have ended up getting my first kiss on my Mission! Haha she planted one right on my cheek hahahaha man were we laughing. Well thats about all for this week! I hope all is well back in the greatest town in the world (Santa Clara) and everywhere else! I love all of you guys, oh and Aunt Kathy thanks for the Jerky! Tell Clayton that Elk was dang good!

Elder Akins