Happy Father's Day!

Dear Family,
The trek news is great!  I was thinking about the Paradise trekkers this week.  And thanks for the package!  I got it on the 16th, at interviews (2nd go-round).  Wow, that's speedy.  You should have seen the look on this missionaries face when I saw those cookies (and cookie crumbs) and candy, and pictures.  And Sarah, that card is classy!  Another cool thing was the Filipino-meets-Swedish-Fish look I've been seeing all week.  Aye!  It sticks to my teeth!  Licorice is also something most people haven't seen before.  Just a note about "cookies".  In the Philippines, a cookie means saltine crackers with some kind of something in-between -- anything goes.  Milk and Butter are legitimate flavors.
So last week, I got to lunch time, right?  About twelve o'clock, everything starts smelling really good as everyone starts cooking their "ulam".  That's the time that we head back to our apartment.  Most places, lunch is an hour and so is dinner.  Here, they've got their ciesta time for a few hours, where most people are natutulog ("out").  So we've got two hours for lunch, and no dinner.  I'm learning to do as the Filipinos do -- eat lunch and dinner in one sitting at noon time.  The goal is to develop a camel sort of survival method.  The seven straight hours of uninterrupted work in the afternoon is amazing, though.  I've got another half-hour of language study until 2:30, then we're out the door again.  We're only working in the "circle of strengh" right now, which generally means walking distance from the church.  Within about twenty minutes walking distance.  Once we pick an area to spend some time finding in, we start talking to people and "tao po"-ing doors.  Thanks to the awesome open-ness of the people here, over the course of a few weeks we generally end up teaching the first lesson to most of the neighborhood (that depends on the area, of course).  We visit at different times of day so we can catch husbands at home, that's the hardest thing.  We hardly ever get rejected flat out, but we get a lot of "stop by on the next time, ok?"s.  Even when people are really nice during the first lesson, sometimes it's a different story on the second visit.  Culturally, it's really hard for them to come out and tell us they don't want to listen, so they "disappear".  At first it seemed to me like child-like hiding, we'll see them as we come down the street, and they just smile and slip inside and a minute later some youngster comes to the door and says nobody's home.  So we teach a ton of Lesson 1's, and then the numbers of people in the neighborhood start to dwindle, sadly.  We'll end up with some solid investigators with baptismal dates, and we'll keep knocking on doors until we've talked to everyone we possibly can.
It's amazing to see the difference in investigators that actually keep their commitments on the second visit.  That's way exciting.
Ahh!  I forgot to tell you about our baptism on Saturday, it was great, but I'm out of time.  I'll write about it next week.  Can I request the trek letter on paper, with additional thoughts and happenings?  Thanks again for the news and the package, Ya'll are the best, ha?  (Rachel, I'll have to write you about the "ha's and "eh"'s that get thrown around here, it's better than Canada)
Happy Father's day, Dad!
Love,
Elder Loren Peck