Loa Buddhist Temple
Look at the trees in this pictures, it will give you an idea of how huge it was.
Three of the Loa missionaries. I'm with Elder Holm and Elder Coomes.
A picture of us talking to President Hammond.
Elder Seibert messaged me from home with his giant dog. He lives in Minnesota.
A random family visited our ward on Sunday and brought a bunch of school supplies for the kids. It was so cool.
There was a major flood in the place where we teach english.
The sign outside the building.
We teach English to the government officials and their families.
Letter:
Sooo I am finally in Laos now. It was a long time coming, but I am here and I am settled in. The first week which I was in Laos, I learned a ton.
First of all, Laos is not like Thailand. There are definitely some similarities like the prominent religion being Buddhism, but for the most part they are super different. One of the biggest reasons for this is that Laos is a communist country. Communism has had a major impact on the church here in Laos and has made it extremely difficult for missionaries to do missionary work. We are not allowed to proselyte at all. No speaking of the church, or Jesus Christ, or the fact that we are missionaries. We call each other by out first names everywhere. The only time when we are allowed to teach anyone about the gospel is during a two hour block on Sunday which is the same two hours that we are allowed to attend church. So in the second hour after sacrament meeting, we have to get investigators into a room where we teach them.
There are 2 wards in all of Laos and each ward gets about 80 people to church each week. There is only 1 church building in all of Laos where both wards attend. We still only have 2 hours where they can both attend church, so ward 1 has sacrament meeting first hour and ward 2 has class, then they switch and ward 2 has sacrament meeting for second hour and ward 1 goes to class.
This last week we taught an investigator named ປອງ (Bong). He was so awesome. That was my first time meeting him, but I could totally feel his faith. Bong has a baptismal date for the 18th of this month. After that, he has agreed to let us teach his nephew who comes with him to church.
A question that might pop into your head (cause it sure did pop into my head when I first got here) is "how do you find investigators if you can't proselyte at all and follow all these other strict rules?" Well that all lies in the hands of the members, and we have the best members here in the world. Laos is the one of the highest baptizing areas in the entire mission, and it is because the members here understand the missionaries can't proselyte, so the members pick up for our slack by inviting their friends and family members to church and to learn. Not only does the area of Laos get a lot of baptisms, but the retention rate for all of the new people who get baptized AND stay in the church is extremely higher than in Thailand. (Not saying anything negative about Thailand though. Laos is just amazing.)
One thing that surprised me was how different the languages between Thai and Laotian actually are. I heard it was mostly the same before I got here, but I only understood like 10 percent at first. It kind of freaked me out because I thought it wouldn't be too hard to switch over to speaking Laotian, but I'm definitely gonna have to work on it. I was texting a member who lived in Thailand and said, "Hey, what are you doing today?" in Laotian and he didn't know what it meant. That surprised me.
The differences that we have to get used to here in Laos are extreme, but the strength of the gospel in the members make it all worth it. I will try to tell more stories about it in the future. The history is very interesting.
Love-Elder Barron
