Elder Harding and I at the school on
Christmas day.
Out on our bikes.
This is a tiny banana and by tiny I mean tiny.
Delicious bugs that were for sale on the border of Thailand and Cambodia.
Signs warning of possible land mines lined the road when we walked to the border of Cambodia.
Some fabric that I bought to have made into some freaking cool ties. Each finished tie came to about $3.
With some chickens.
We did service for a woman that we are teaching.
We met these guys when we were out inviting. They wanted to take a picture with us.
Taking selfies while out biking the land.
We helped a member sell chicken at her food stand and she was nice enough to give us a ton of chicken when we were done. When we got home to eat them, we realized that they were all necks. Lol! Kind of strange to eat and not much meat. Haha
A family from America came to visit our ward! Their son served here.
After church we all eat dinner together every Sunday.
The young single adults in the ward keep teasing me and telling me that I look like Groot from Marvel. This picture below is the one that they used to compare. Ummm....thank you?
UPDATE:
There is this man in our ward named Brother Sack. He is a man who is unable to go to church because he is bed-ridden. He lives alone and has a sister who comes to visit him once a week, but other that that, he sees nobody all week and just lays in bed. It is very sad. We go and visit him once a week to give him the sacrament, also just give him company and serve him in any way we can. He loves seeing us and we had the opportunity last week to clean his house for him. It felt so good to be able to help him out, and it was definitely a blessing for us to be able do that for him.
A little story about when we were cleaning: A Doo Geh is a lizard in Thailand that is called a “Doo Geh” because it makes the sound "doo geh" every time you go near it. Most Thai people are deathly afraid of these lizards because they bite. When they bite, their jaw locks and you have to break their jaw to get it off. There are stories of Doo Geh's ripping off people’s fingers and toes. I understand why Thai people are afraid of them. Usually they are about 8 inches long. While we were cleaning brother Sack's house, I lifted up a bed to clean under it, and there was a Doo Geh sitting there a foot away from my hand. One more thing, it was 18 INCHES LONG. This thing was totally massive! I flipped the bed and every one just sprints out of the house, then, we realize Brother Sack is still in there in a different room, so we run back into the house and see the lizard scuttle super fast out the window, and we ran to Brother Sack in his bedroom to see if he is okay. He was just lying their laughing at us with the dumbest grin on his face. It was hilarious.
Last P-day, we went to the Thailand-Cambodian border. There was a giant market there that sells things for super cheap prices. It was so much fun! There is a man in Surin who takes really cool fabrics and he can make cool things with it. I had him make me a scripture case and some ties. Some of the ties turn out totally awesome because of the cool Thai fabric.
One of my favorite parts of the Thai language is all of the words that you can put together to have new words. Here are some direct translations and what the actual meaning equals. Water room means bathroom, sun leaves means east, sun falls means west, hot heart means impatient, foot bag means sock, diamond heart means unyielding, writing tool means pencil, low heart means mean minded, fallen heart means surprised, there are so many words like this and a lot of them are super interesting.
There is a man in the Surin ward named Brother Ahn. He hasn't been to church in a while, so we were trying to think of ways to help him come more often. Elder Harding thought it would help him if he had a calling in the ward. Brother Ahn was not super interested in having a calling, so we didn’t know what to do, but then I remembered that Elder Harding told me before hand that he likes playing the guitar, so I started talking to him about it. He kind of perked up and he began to be a lot happier in our conversation. Then, I remembered that we had a guitar that had been left here by a member a few days before, so I ran and got it and asked him to play something for us. I didn't really know what to expect from that, and he was really hesitant. We got him to say yes to playing us a song, and he started playing Hotel California. I don't think this man knew English very well, but he started belting out all the words. He was so freaking good! Definitely the best guitar player I have ever heard in person. It was such a cool experience. Then, after he was done, he was super happy to accept a calling in the ward and come to church more. I know that God helped that man to come back to church and helped us in teaching him.
This last week, we were doing service at a member’s house by helping cut down a bunch of branches on a tree. It was fun because I got to use a machete and climb up in to a tree to cut down a bunch of branches. I'm pretty sure my parents know this already, but I really love climbing trees. It is so much fun. Back at home, I used to climb high up in our giant trees and hang my hammock between to branches and sleep 30-40 feet up in the air. Nobody in my family would know where I was. Haha. Good memories. Anyways, as I was cutting this tree, there were a ton of giant ants that were crawling all over it. Every once and a while, one would get on me and their bites hurt pretty bad. As I continued cutting branches, the ants just started multiplying. I have no idea where the ants were coming from, but they were beginning to just cover the entire tree. They started biting me a ton more and I wasn't sure how much longer I could stay in the tree because of all the bites. Then I was cutting down pretty much the last branch I was gonna cut, and when it was falling down, it hit another branch and landed right on top of me on the tree. I quickly heaved it off of me. And it hit the ground, but then one of the Thai people watching me screamed and yelled (translation) "YOU HAVE A FREAK TON OF ANTS ON YOU!!!" I look down on my pants, and my pants alone had about 200 giant ants that I could see. The next 20 minutes was one of the most painful moments of my life as I tried to get them all off me as the were biting me. It took a super long time because they were just crawling around in every nook and cranny of my body. That was a very unique experience on my mission that I hope doesn't go specifically like that ever again. I found 8 ants in my hair about 5 hours later when I was showering.
I got to give a talk 2 Sundays ago in sacrament meeting. I was a little bit nervous, but it went totally awesome. My topic was the importance of Christmas, which was kind of funny because Christmas was already over, so I talked about our goal to Light the World in December. It is a great program to help us think about giving service during Christmas time, but I gave my talk about how just because Christmas time is over, we don't have to stop lighting the world. Service and trying to be like Jesus should be a year round activity. We should strive to be better people in everything we say and do 24/7. If we ever fail to do this, or we are moving in the wrong direction, there is never a better time to start than now.
Everyone have a great week! Try to do some service for someone I your life every single day!
-Elder Barron
