Cock Cages
Holding one of the cocks (tall, skinny chickens) that I mentioned in my letter.
A normal street in Bangkapi, Bangkok, Thailand
Me doing the chicken dance with Pawma,
one of our neighbors.
A pretty sunset
A building-Thai style
Traveling with Elder Steele to our teaching appointment on an open taxi.
How you spell ice cream in Thailand. =)
A rainbow because it rains once a day.
Our collection of empty plastic bottles
that we need to recycle.
Ronald McDonald -n- me doing the Thai greeting.
Awesome sushi!
A cool restaurant called "Shabushi"
mentioned in my letter.
More rainbows
Our investigators little dog.
My Letter:
This week I hit my 10% mark on my mission. It’s totally crazy because it feels like nothing at all. I know that I don't have as long as I think I do here. It will be over before I know it and I have no idea when I will ever be returning to Thailand next. Hopefully I can always maximize my output so I have no regrets. I love it here!
So last week we got to go eat this totally delicious food at this interesting place called “Shabushi”. We walked into this place and took our seats to eat and there was a conveyor belt traveling around to every seat in the restaurant and it was bringing around little plates of food to all of the seats. I looked at all the plates and they were all raw meat and uncooked mushrooms or tofu. I was a little bit confused cause I didn't really want to eat all this stuff raw, but then they brought out this pot of soup/broth stuff and set it on a burner. So basically, we had to put whatever we wanted to eat into the soup and cook it ourselves. It was an awesome experience and super fun. My favorite part of the whole restaurant was that they had a giant table of never ending sushi and I love sushi. I ate so much sushi my companion was worried he was starving me when we were back at the house. It was awesome!
Our next door neighbors are these super amazingly nice old people who love the missionaries! They aren't members of the church, but they know everything about being a missionary and they love helping us. We call them PawMa. One morning, they called us randomly and said "Hey, we accidentally made too much eggs and toast. Can we give some to you?" which is funny because they are a couple who have lived together for 40 years, so I think they would know how many eggs they eat by now. They are so nice to us. Yesterday, they had us over for some delicious Vietnamese style dinner and then we played some fun games where if you mess up, you have to do a funny chicken dance for everyone while they sing and laugh their heads off at you.
I have been enjoying reading a lot in The Book of Mormon lately. It is such an interesting story. It starts out when this man Lehi in Jerusalem is commanded my God through a vision to take his family and travel into the wilderness out of Jerusalem. He and his family follow the commandments by God and have faith in him, so they are led by God to the ocean. Here, they build a big boat under the direction of God and travel across the sea to the lands we know now as The Americas. Here, Lehi's descendants share stories about living in the America's and how the descendants who follow God are blessed and those who don't are cursed while they combat against each other. The Book of Mormon does not replace The Bible in any way. I believe that The Book of Mormon is true just as much as I believe The Bible is true. They just support each other and testify of Jesus Christ coming to the Earth. If you haven't read it, you should read it. I am in Thailand sharing the gospel because I know of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you want a free Book of Mormon you can get one at Mormon.org.
Elder Steele and I were walking around teaching everyone about the gospel of Jesus Christ with one of our members who likes helping us. Her name is May. We stopped by one of her friend’s houses and there was about to be a massive rainstorm, so we stopped in their backyard and just got to know them under one of their pavilions. It was fun talking to them and their dad showed us how he raises cocks (they are like tall, skinny chickens) in his yard. They were super cool and fun to feed. Their father was funny cause he kept telling me that I would make a perfect soldier for Thailand because I was tall and strong. Haha! He kept feeling my arms and telling me I was strong. It was weird, but at least all the push-ups I have been doing is making a difference.
One day last week, Elder Steele and I were walking to a mall for one of our appointments and I saw this guy walking in the opposite direction as us who stood out a ton. He stood out for two reasons, first, he was the only other person in sight who was white other than us, and second, he was 6' 8"! Anyways, we started talking to him and he seemed super interested in what we have to say because he was asking us a ton of questions about everything we believe. It seemed really fun at first but all the sudden, his questions turned into attacks and he was not interested whatsoever instead of just trying to disprove anything that we say. It made me really sad because he was so unwilling to listen and was so combative when we brought up anything we believed. The one thing about God's plan for everyone is that no matter what we do or find out, we will probably never see Jesus Christ or God the Father with our own eyes here upon the earth, but that is all part of God's plan for us. One of the hardest things to continuously have in this life is FAITH. Faith is believing without seeing. God speaks to us in many ways, and through feelings is one of the strongest of those ways. We have to be open to feel these feelings of peace and comfort from God to know what is good and right, then we have to act on faith. Faith is acting on your good feelings. This is why I am on a mission. I felt it is what I needed to do and so I acted. Every day is important to grow in faith so that when that faith is tested, we will be able to choose the good over the bad. I have a testimony that I know this is true. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
I hope you all have a great week this week, thank you for reading my letter! I love getting emails from anyone!
-Elder Barron
