Yes, it was freaky...

 These elephants are maaasssiiive!

 Interesting things spotted 

while walking down the road.

 These birds have chains so they won't fly away.

 An awesome bridge.

 It's about to rain.....again.

 Vietnamese food.

 Moo gra ta. We had to cook our own food.

 We are at the home of some 

members of the church.

(Above) This is the street that we live on.

 Random street on our way to a 

teaching appointment.

 This is Adam. He was hanging out with us when this rain cloud formed. It's about to dump. 
(Notice the 7-Eleven!)

 Slashing Elder Steele with a samurai sword. =) 
(I found it when helping some people move.)

 A huge rain cloud coming.

 Last p-day we went to a crocodile farm.

Update:

Hey, I think I am starting to understand stuff... psych.

I have some days when I am just doing awesome with the language! I understand what we are teaching in lessons and I am speaking too! It feels so great when I start to understand what people are saying because I am on the other side of the WORLD! It's about as different from English as I could possibly get, but anyways, whenever I have one of those really good days, the next day I don't understand a single thing anyone says. I always remember that I am a total newbie at the language. I know that I just have to have faith that I am actually learning slowly every day.

So last P-day, Elder Steele and I went to a crocodile farm here in Thailand. It is apparently the biggest crocodile farm in the world. We went to this awesome crocodile show and these guys were sitting there holding their heads and their hands in the crocodile’s mouths and they would pull out right before the crocodile snapped down on them. It was totally freaky. I also got to take a picture with a tiger. It was totally an experience I will never forget. While we were driving home Elder Steele and I were sitting on the left side of the car and the sister missionaries were sitting on the right side of the car. We had a contest to see who could see more 7-Elevens on their side of the car. It was a 45-minute drive and we saw a total of 24 7-Elevens on the way home. These Thai people are in love with their 7-Eleven!

In Thailand it is very abnormal to see a white person, so Thai people call white people Falongs. In Thai, a falong is a guava fruit. Every time I walk by little kids they start yelling at me Falong! Falong! It is pretty funny. Thai people will also think we don't understand them and call us falongs, but then when we reply to them they are super surprised. They also get a huge kick out of when they see us eating guava. They start laughing and say falong eating falong!!! hahahaha!!!

There is a lady here named May. She is such an awesome member of the church! She has had a lot of challenges about a year ago. I don't want to go into detail at all, but she has had so many more challenges in her life than I have. She has helped me so much with Thai and she loves telling her friends about the Gospel and helps us teach them in lessons about faith and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I admire her faith and she has helped me to strengthen my own faith.

Whenever it is about to rain here, I can always tell because it gets super hot. Then a wall of black clouds starts coming across the sky. Everyone starts running around because they want to get inside or get their food to a dry place so it doesn't get soaked. Everyone who is walking gets plastic bags out of their pockets and puts them over their heads because they believe if your head gets rained on at all, you will get sick. At first, I thought that was a dumb belief that they have, but I am pretty sure now that it is actually true. There is so much pollution in the air in Bangkok, that it is pretty much acid rain coming down on us. It makes me not want to get my head wet either. Also, whenever it rains, IT RAINS. It hardly ever just drizzles. It will be pouring buckets down in only 5 minutes.

This week on Monday, I had a Zone Conference with a visiting General Authority, Elder Homer. He talked a lot about how we all have our own gifts given to us by God. It is so true. Every single person I know has his or her own gifts different from everyone else. You need to use your own gifts that God has given you to do good, when you do what you can to do good, God will bless you and give you more gifts that you can use to help others with. I believe that these gifts that we have aren't something that we are supposed to use to make our own life better, they are responsibilities to help others. We will be filled with more happiness if we turn outward than if we turn inward. One of my favorite scriptures in The Book of Mormon is Ether 12:27.

It says, "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

If we can come unto God with our weaknesses, they can become strengths through him.

I love receiving emails from anyone at boston.barron@myldsmail.net

Have a great week everyone. 

-Elder Boston Barron

Let's Get Down To Business!

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 

The spirit is strong in Thailand

 This is a panoramic view of the park that I talk about in my letter.

This is an evening shot of the same park 

on our way home that night. 

I thought it was so beautiful.

 This is a "Wat".

 They call this a "gang monster" which is basically a boat taxi on a man made river. We rode it heading to our teaching appointment.

Some dresses for sale. I was wondering if the cat came with the dress.....=)

 My companion reached his 1 year mark in Thailand so we celebrated by smashing his face into a cake.

 We spent some time cleaning the church grounds of some fallen limbs.

 Cleaning the spider webs off of the ceiling.

 We are with some church members having a sing hymns in the dark party thing. Haha! As you can tell from this picture, Thai people have a lot of personality!

 We are eating lunch with the kid that calls me "Zombie". I talk about it in my letter.

This is a funny man who is a very active member of the church. His name is pronounced "Duhyee."

 This is a sculpture made of of drinking straws that some man who they call "straw man" made for me. He walks around and makes these straw sculptures for people and gives them away.

 I got a kick out of these tiny bananas. 

They were really good and I ate 8.

 My district at the zoo last P-day.

My Update:

Howdy yall!  This was a week full of miracles and fun! My new companion, Elder Steele, has his one year mark this week. He has been a missionary for a full year! I am really thankful for all of the help he gives me every day and I hope that I can be as good of a missionary and as good at the language as him when I'm in his shoes.

This week we have been teaching a ton! I love it when I hear a sentence that I know and I can answer. Most of the time I just write down all the words that I hear and I don't know so I can figure it out later and try to learn it for next time. I try to treat it like a game because that helps me to try harder and focus when I don't really know what’s going on. I always feel God helping me along the way. I know that if I do my very best, God will make up the rest that I can't do myself. Knowing this helps me know that it doesn't matter how well I can do things on my own, but if what I am doing is a good thingand if I am doing my best, God will help me with the rest.

I love going to church here! It is amazing how everything is similar to our church back in Arkansas! It is all the exact same church here with the same spirit. Everything is just in Thai. =) I got to bear my testimony of what I know about the gospel to the entire congregation last Sunday. ( I mentioned it last week.) It was completely in Thai and they all said I did a very good job and that I was skilled. I really hope they could actually understand my Thai/American accent. I know when I say something weird because I will just be speaking to someone in Thai and they start laughing in my face. Good times. =)

We had this one kid we taught who was very good at English, so we got to teach him in English! I was super excited to be able to teach him because he loved asking questions and I actually knew how to answer them. He loved learning about the gospel and so we asked him if we could teach him again next week and he accepted! That made me excited to see him again. 

Elder Steele and I went to a park called Suwan Nowameen. It was very beautiful and there were a ton of people hanging out. Elder Steele and I were meeting and talking to people and inviting them to church,  I had the chance to talk to some Thais all by myself. My plan for getting them to talk to me was asking them to help me practice Thai and telling them I had only been here for 2 weeks and most of the people I tried talking to would just say okay and try to speak with me. Everyone in Thailand is very nice and even if they don't want to hear about religion, they still talk to me and are friendly. Amazing people.

One of the people I was talking to was going on a walk so I was just walked with her. She was super nice to me. She said her name was "New". When the conversation about religion started I would say something about what we believed and she would respond with what she believed. It was very interesting. She was Buddhist and so I said we believed that we have a God and we are his children. She said Buddha is her God. I got into a conversation about sin and I said Jesus dies on the cross and preformed the atonement so we can repent and be clean from sin and live with God again. She said that they can't get rid of sin, but they can even-out their sin by doing good and the balance between how much sin and good they have, will decide what they will be in the next life. As the conversation went on, she told me that she wanted to go to church with us. I was super surprised and so I asked for her contact information and she gave it to me. I will contact her soon and see if she would like to go to church and learn more about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. =)

Every Friday we have a game/sports night at the church with all the members of the ward and any other people we invite to play with us. They always freak out when I dunk the basketball and ask me to do it again. =D It is really funny because then they all try to dunk it and just throw the ball at the rim as hard as they can. 

Everyone here loves playing Uno. I like that game because I know how to say the numbers and the colors. I have fun playing with the kids. One of the kids started calling me a “Zombie” for some reason. I was glad because they are warming up to me a lot and joking around with me. It’s fun. (the Thai word for zombie is like “zum BPee”, they just over enunciated the B really hard.)

In our house that Elder Steele and I live in, there is an air conditioning unit that is only powerful enough to cool one room. The room that we sleep in. So we try to keep our doors closed so it keeps our room cool. We turn it on and off whenever we come and go so we save electricity. Lately it started dripping little by little each night while it was on and it was getting worse each night, this morning it was pouring buckets out of it! It was kinda hilarious because we didn't know what to do. Elder Steele tried to call our landlord but they didn't answer, so I just looked at the filter inside and it was way clogged with dust. We cleaned it out and put it back in so hopefully it works. 

Anyways, thanks for reading my email! I love it when I get emails from everyone. Have a good week!

-Elder Boston Barron