Elder Siebert and I in Ta Doom. I love this place. We are in a car headed to a members house.
This is a mango tree at a members house. We both got to eat a green/unripe mango. It wasn't what you would think a mango would taste like. It was like a bland apple, very crunchy. Apparently they like eating the mangos before they turn orange. I don't really get that because they are SOOO good when they are ripe. But it was still good anyways. This tree also had a ton of ants on it.
Me in the back of a pickup eating lunch.
A green mango.
Riding around in Ta Doom in the back of a truck was super beautiful.
I was surfing on the back of the truck bed.
I almost fell off so I stopped.
A big field of rice.
Hay field.
Picking up hay with some members and investigators.
We had so much fun doing this because usually people don't let us help them with their work, but they did today and it was fuuuuuuun.
Elder Siebert likes flexing.
Seriously though, look at the size of his arms!
They gave us these tiny watermelons to eat. We just karate chopped them and ate them like a savage. I think it was more delicious that way too. (You should try it Sarger.)
Not much to explain here,
just me being a happy boy.
I look like super hay man.
We see dogs all over the place in Thailand.
Mamma dog, "Do you mind?"
Saying goodbye to Ta Doom.
The most delicious Thai food I have tried in my life was in Ta Doom. It was sooooo good.
As you can see here, there are 42 pig heads
sitting here on a table. :)
Some english class pictures.
Not many people showed up this day. :/
This was a dang pretty sunset in Burium.
I found this random guy playing basketball and he was wearing a BYU t-shirt and he had no idea what BYU was. He wasn't even a member. Haha! Go Cougs in Thailand!
This is Brother Suk. He has a way cool contraption to get him in and out of his house.
Update:
The longer I am out in Thailand on my mission, the more English I seem to be forgetting. I didn't really notice it a ton, but when I video call with my family, there is so many times when I try to explain something and I know there is a good word to describe it, but I can't think of it. I'm sure it will only get worse too. It is definitely hard to learn new languages. There are so many obstacles.
Last Monday was probably one of the best, if not THE best, days on my mission. It was so fun and we got so much work done!
There is a lady named “Phone” in the Surin ward who lives super far away from Surin. Her house is about one and a half hours out into the fields of rice into a tiny city called Ta doom. She lives very far, but she still comes to church most of the time because she is such a strong member. (Sister Phone even served a mission when she was young like us.) Phone has been talking to a ton of her friends out there in Ta doom and getting some of them interested in learning, so we decided to spend a day all the way out there.
The first thing you need to know about Ta doom is that this place is TINY. Thailand is a small country in itself. Surin is in the middle of nowhere in Thailand, and Ta doom is literally in the middle of nowhere compared to Surin. So we are approximately in the middle of the middle of nowhere when we go out to Ta doom. This is exactly what the prophets have talked about when they say the gospel will be brought to all corners of the Earth. We went to one of those corners. When we get out there, everyone there just stares at us because most of them have probably never seen a white person before. Sister Phone said I was the 4th missionary to ever go to Ta doom, and that Elder Siebert and I are the first missionaries to ever just go randomly walking/inviting around the town.
We taught this one lady named Uh-an. She was super happy and loved learning. She was asking a ton of questions and got way into it. Her husband was also listening to us, but if we asked him any questions or tried to get him to read a scripture, he refused to talk. He was being very stubborn. After our lesson, we asked him if we could help him with whatever his work is. He said, "Sure, but it is very hard because it is lifting boxes." We thought that would be fun, so we got in the back of his giant flatbed truck and he handed us each an unripe mango and started driving off into the rice fields. The mango was still green, not orange yet, so we just started eating it like an apple. It basically was like an apple, but more crispy and the skin was super hard, but it was very delicious.
We got into the middle of a giant field and he stopped and said "Alright are you ready?" We asked, "Where are the boxes?" He then turned around and pointed to a ton of bails of hay scattered throughout this giant field. (Apparently, we thought he was saying boxes, but he was actually saying bails of hay... Someday I will get the language haha) Anyways, Elder Siebert and I were running around out in the field picking up bails of hay and throwing them into this guy's truck. It was so much fun! When we finished the guy told us that was the fastest he had every seen anyone work and pick up all the bails. (That was the goal all along.) =)
When we were done carrying the bails of hay, this guy gave us gave us each a watermelon and just said, "Eat it." We asked him if he had a knife and he said, "You don't need a knife just do this:" then he just punched one of his hand with the other and I think I got the point. I was a little bit confused, but eventually I just karate chopped that watermelon in half so that I could eat it. It was surprisingly effective, but I just got very sticky. When Elder Siebert did his watermelon is splatted all over his shirt and now he has a shirt with a giant red spot. It was way funny.
When we were waiting for our bus to head back to Surin, we had some free time, so we decided to go finding at a nearby market. We ended up talking to a family that was Christian. We spoke to them a lot about how we believe The Bible is true, and also we have relatively newer book called The Book of Mormon, which is about prophets similar to Moses but in ancient America. The Book of Mormon just supports the truth of the Bible and gives us more of a foundation to build God's church. This new family was very interested, so we gave them a copy of The Book of Mormon and told them we would visit them next week. We had so many things packed into one day and we got so much done.
Lately, we have been teaching a lady named Sister Nuey. I have talked a little bit about her in past email, and basically she loves learning with us, but the rest of her family is extremely Buddhist, so she really wants to get baptized, but she is also scared what her family will think and if she will be able to keep all of the commandments. She is very indecisive and has been learning with the missionaries for a very long time and has learned everything there is needed to learn before getting baptized. I had been thinking about her and I felt like God was telling me she needed some help with making the decision, so I decided that we should meet with her and just asked her the baptismal questions without making it feel all serious and stressful for her. So that is exactly what we did. She ended up answering all the questions wonderfully and after that we told her. "These questions we just asked you are exactly what you need to know to get baptized. We believe that you are 100% ready for baptism, but it you still don't want to get baptized, I don't think we can help you anymore." Then she said, "Really? That's all we need to know?" I could feel right then that she had a change of heart and she ended up saying she was ready to be baptized, and her baptismal date was set for exactly one week later. It was a way cool experience.
Lately Elder Siebert and I have been doing a lot of service over at President Arm's house. We just carry a ton of dirt to their back yard for like an hour. After that, he always calls one of his friends named Ning who is pretty interested in learning about how following the gospel of Jesus Christ will help her life. She is seems very interested in learning all the time, but she never comes to church. Hopefully she can start doing that in the future.
We got to have a good talk with one of the strongest members in the Surin Branch. Her name is Sister มด (Moat) Which means ant in Thai. She has had a hard past few years in her family, but she has so much humble faith. She is just wonderful to talk to and I want to get her helping us teaching because her testimony can help so many people.
This past Friday, we were doing a switch off with the Elders in Buriam, but we were waiting for them to get here on the bus. We had a little free time before they got here, so we had to come up with some thing to do. After some hard core thinking (which is fun to do every once and a while), I thought of our neighbor’s dog. I have never been a super big dog lover, but I really felt like we should help this dog out. It is difficult to describe, and would do better with a picture, but this dog looks like a rug. This dog is 16 years old and I doubt it has ever got a haircut (or a bath for that matter), so I wanted to give him his first hair cut! I got some gloves because there was no way I was touching that thing with my bare hands, and I just got some normal scissors you would use in school to cut paper. That was the easy part. Then we tried to catch the dog. We were running around for a while trying to catch it, but it was just running away. Eventually it ran to its owner, our neighbor, and he was like, "What are you doing to my dog?!" We just said, "Can we cut his hair?" and the owner just about did a little jig and said "YES PLEASE". (Side note: our neighbor is one of the nicest men I have ever seen in my life. He is always an angel to us. Recently, I found out the reason for that is because he has a weak heart. He said "If I get mad, I will have a heart attack and die." - direct translation) Anyways, so he just gives us a leash for the dog and sat to watch us make the attempt. So this dog is covered completely in big chunks of hair like dreads. It felt like cutting through a rug, or a really thick blanket. Meanwhile, I was doing the Thai squat the entire time for about 45 minutes while I was wrecking these scissors on this poor dog's hair. My legs almost separated themselves from my body and ran away from me because they hurt so bad, but let me tell you, that dog actually looked kind of cute when we were done. Half of it was because it was just running around like crazy afterwards looking so happy. I think it really helped out our relationship with our neighbor as well. He loves us now. He keeps thanking us for giving him a new dog! Haha!
After we finished cutting the dog, I got to get on a bus and travel to Buriram. I went on a switch off with Elder Lemone, who is only on his second transfer. It was fun, and it really made me think back to when I was in his place and I couldn't understand what anyone was saying. Those were the good ole days. While I was in Buriram, I got to eat McDonalds. This is the first time I ate McDonalds in Thailand. I'm sure many would be happy to hear that it tastes the exact same here as it does back in America. The only difference I saw was that you can get a bowl of rice with your chicken nuggets. These Asians gotta eat rice like every flippin meal.
Funny story, while I was in Buriram. I got to play sports night there with all of the members. They have a very fun sports night here because a ton of the members show up. Some were playing basketball and some were playing volleyball. Of course, I went to go play basketball. There was one guy who was probably in his 30's playing with us who had a BYU shirt on, and I thought that was so cool. When we were done playing, I started talking to him about BYU and he just seemed super confused. Apparently, this guy wasn't even a member, but he just saw us playing and wanted to come play too. He said he had no idea what BYU was, but he found that shirt at a random markets somewhere here in Thailand. I thought that was totally funny, so I got a picture with him.
Every Sunday, it seems like the branch here in Surin has been starting later and later every week. It should be starting at 9, but in the last few weeks, it has been starting as late as 9:15. So we talked to President Arm about it and he agreed that it would be a good idea to start at 9 no matter who was there. When we started church this last Sunday, there were like 8 people in the whole room, and they just slowly trickled in in the middle of the meeting. Hopefully all the members see that we won't start late anymore and realize the importance of being on time as well so we can keep this going.
After church, we started planning Sister Nuey’s baptism coming up here on Saturday. It was fun because all the members were getting into it. They all get excited when they hear someone is getting baptized. Especially Nuey because she is already really good friends with all of them. She has been an investigator for so long that a ton of the members came up to us and said "I thought she would never get baptized!"
I am so glad that she didn't think that too because no matter where you are right now, you can always repent and God will accept everyone and bless them. Sister Nuey is a great example of that!
I love getting those emails from the fam and friends! I hope every one has a wonderful week!
-Elder Barron
