Nandito Ako Sa Daraga!

 Hey guys, well I'm now here in Daraga! Its in Legazpi, and actually our Mission Office is here in Daraga! So I get to see my buddies in the Office a lot more now haha! I think thats why they said I would be happy. Or it could be that I have a super cool area which is out in the mountains. Its nice, I live near all the good restaurants, have a nice apartment because I'm living with the Zone Leaders, live in a Ward, but get to work out in the countryside! Its great. And also I believe this was one of the old areas of my cousin Blake Frei! So I'm super stoked to clean up his mess and baptize all of those people he missed haha. I've finally been made Senior. My companion is a Filipino kid who just got done training, names Elder Torrano. Super good kid, loves working so I'm pretty happy. He's way good at drawing, like way good so I got him to promise to make me a nice pic of a big buck or something. My housemates are great too, both are Polys and ZLs. One is from Hawaii, Elder Tevaga, and actually lived near the Hookilou Cafe on Oahu! He says he knows who the Bassos are but not personally! Small World haha. Well just the other day we got power, everyone was happy about that. People threw parties for it actually haha so we walked past a lot of drunk guys. This week I met our investigators and got to know them and stuff. My first lesson actually here ended up pretty good. His name is Neal and he was having a hard time understanding Infant Baptism. So we explained it to him better. After the lesson we reextended a Baptismal Date to him and he accepted. They said he has denied everytime before. They had taught him all of the lessons, but just didn't have a testimony. At the end of the lesson we invited him to pray everyday and read everyday so that he can be able to receive an answer from God if what we are teaching his true. So we are hoping he will gain a real Testimony soon. He also told us he thinks that he himself is the one getting in the way of him knowing if our Church is true, so he will try to be better at doing the things we ask him to do. Hes awesome. The rest of the weeks we just did Service in our area. I bought an Itak (machete) in my last area and I've used it quite a bit now haha. We just chop up everyones trees that have fallen usually. My hands have gotten all soft like lately, they look like girls hands haha but they're getting better now that I've got some blisters going. And to end it all off we had a great PDay today. The benefit of being here in Daraga is we have a nice Pingpong table in one of the Church buildings near the Chapel, so I've been smoking kids all day. Also we balled a little. Did work for the most part. Elder Tevagas pretty good, he's the same height as me but a lot bigger so its hard to guard him haha. But we still did good, lost by 1 ha. Well I love you all and I'm so happy to be here in the Mission Field! Take care.

Elder Jake Akins