Back In Buriram

 Us with some people that we are teaching.

 While out finding we came across this body building competition and I got a pick for Elder Siebert who was a body builder before his mission and sent it to him. 

His response, "They're so small!" 

Haha! I love that guy!

 An old Buddhist Temple that we visited called Phanom Rung. I talk about it in my letter.

It was dropping buckets on us but we bought ponchos and still had a blast.

 I found this little sculpture thing and thought it was cool.

 Me and friends from Surin.

 Us and some friends from Roy Et.

 This kid is the cutest thing alive. I was playing with him and got him laughing his head off. His family said that he usually doesn't like playing with people, but for some reason he was loving playing with me.

More Surin friends.

My Letter:

This last week was PACKED full of way fun things to do. I feel very tired, but I also feel like we got so much done lately and my testimony of Jesus Christ has grown immensely. We were teaching one of our recent converts named Bee this last week. She is a really awesome person because she is so energetic and enthusiastic all the time. At one point, I asked her a question and she was just talking a million miles an hour. After a while of her talking, she gasped really big and said, "OH MY GOODNESS, I FORGOT TO BREATH, YOU HAVE TO REMIND ME TO BREATHE, I ALMOST DIED!" It was so funny.

Elder Lemone and I have been progressing the missionary work with the members very well lately. We have been getting referrals for people that might be interested to learn like crazy and it is so much fun. Getting referrals as a missionary is just like getting Christmas presents because it is a new person who we can teach. One of our recent referrals is named Fraud. He is very unsure about learning with us, but today he opened up and we got him to say his first prayer with us. It was awesome.

We were riding our bikes coming from an appointment, and Elder Lemone said, "Ever since I've been with you, I've had a feeling that we should go down this little road when we ride by it" , so we went down it. It was a tiny street that a car couldn't go down, but we saw this really old guy at the end of the street when we made a turn. He saw us and started to make a run for it inside. We tried to say hi to him, but he didn't respond and went inside, but then his daughter came out of the house and we talked to her for a while. She said she was interested and we are going to go see her again in a few days. Cool tender mercies.

Last P-day, we really wanted to go to go visit this Buddhist temple which was about an hour drive out of the city. We had no way to get out there, and as we were looking, the only way we could go was a way too expensive taxi. We were about to give up and not go, but then one of the members called us and said they could take us, so we were like, "THANKYOU!" That was definitely a tender mercy. On our way traveling out there, the clouds started enveloping the sky in darkness and about 5 minutes before we got there, the rains were unleashed upon us. It was coming DOWN big time. At first it was sad that it was raining because we came so far to come out here, and we didn't know if we should go walk up the huge hill to see the temple, but then we just decided why not? So we grabbed some cheap ponchos, (I actually ripped mine getting it on, so I had to buy another one.) and then we went on an adventure. We got soaked pretty fast, but it didn't matter. It was way fun. I think it actually made it more fun since it was raining and we decided to do it anyways.

We had switch-offs this last week with the zone leaders. I got to go with Elder Sudekum. He is one of my best friends in my mission because he is the only one who has been able to serve with me in every one of my areas at one point or another. That was probably the last time I will serve with him though because he is going to be finishing his mission very soon.

We also had Stake Conference this week too. All of the members who live in our stake came to a giant meeting. It was way fun because I got to see all of my friends from Surin. I had a ton of fun being able to talk to them. The speakers were very good. I think a big focus in the talks were about preparing for the temple by making learning more family centered and church supported. I have been thinking a lot lately about how we can try to help some of the families in Buriram to be like that.

Right after Stake Conference, we had Zone Conference with all of the missionaries in our Zone. President Hammond had some wonderful teachings about Jesus Christ and the Atonement. I always knew the importance of the Atonement in every single life of every individual who has ever lived, but President really opened my eyes to understand the importance of teaching that to our investigators. They need to understand the Atonement, or it is difficult to see the point to all of the commitments that we give out. I am definitely going to focus more on that while I am teaching about the gospel.

We were out of Buriram for over half of last week. It is finally good to be back. I am ready to progress this work and apply the things we learned during. Hopefully this last week of this transfer will be good and we can work hard!

I hope you all have a great week!

-Elder Barron