Laos Days Are The Best Days

 Eating lunch. I love hanging out with the members of our church here in Laos.

There are so many of them.

 On our day off we went to a Hmong Museum with a bunch of people and it was so cool.

 Picture taking spots.

 Do I look like a mannequin?

 I climbed the mountain of the golden goat!

 I rode a dinosaur

 This is my companion Noah. He is so much fun.

 Things in a museum.

 I drew our family tree for our class.

 (Sarger, look at your name)

 My Mom sent me 2 packages and I got fruit roll ups with tongue tattoos and this is a unicorn. 

It was lit.

 My packages from my Mom. Thanks Mommy!

 Riding the bus to Thailand for Zone Conference.

Assigning homework to our students.

 Package from my Mom.

Some of my buddies I saw at zone conference.

 Laos Elder selfie.

 I found a sculpture of me and Sarger in Laos!

The Laos Gang

So Much Has Happened!

 Pano of the Mai Klong River dividing Thailand and Laos. This is a view from the church. This is how close we are to the boarder.

 This lady is in our English class and she is the daughter of the President of Laos. Her Grand father's picture is on the money in my pocket.

 This is the last class Elder Jorgensen taught before going home to America.

 Lots of times our students will take random pics of us and send them to the class in group chats. Here's one.

 A butterfly caught in our classroom.

 We were taken out to dinner by our English assistants to a really nice Russian Restaurant. I got to eat all of these mini burgers myself and it was delicious.

 These pictures were taken at the Russian Restaurant. They had these hats for us to wear.

 This is at the baptism of Sing Tong. 

The little boy up front is Kay his Grandson.

 This is a cool sculpture that I found. I think it looks like my sister Quincey when she used to babysit me.

 They gave a gift to Kade on his last day of teaching.

 It has been flooding here a lot lately.

 This is a giant Buddha chillin.

 Cool Buddhist steeples.

 Lots of golden Buddhas.

 We went to this Buddhist temple and they specialized in gongs. This is the the largest one they had.

 We had an activity where we all cleaned the church. Inside and out.

 We had a FHE at the church and we all played games. It was fun.

 Birthday party for Ann.

 We sent this picture to his niece 

who was having a birthday.

 The flood killed all these chickens. 

 Taken randomly by a student.

 Us cleaning the grounds.

Letter:

So here is the deal, I am teaching a ton of English here in Laos. I teach at 5 different locations. Some of the classes are 1 hour and 30 minutes a day and we teach Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or we teach 1 hour a day for every day Monday through Friday. We teach about 4-5 hours of English a day. We plan for 30-45 minutes for each class before hand.

It can be a lot of fun teaching English a lot because we can make friends with all of the students. There are a lot of good things that come out of being a teacher, but I can also see how dang hard it would be. I love being a teacher for free and helping people in this less developed country, but I would never want this to be my career. 

These last few weeks, we have been teaching a man named Sing Tong. He is one of the coolest investigators I have ever taught. His faith seems so unending. Last Sunday he got confirmed for baptism and received the priesthood. Brother Sing Tong also brings his grandson to church every Sunday. His name is Kay. He just turned 8 years old. Kay is a really fun kid. Every time we are eating food with the members after church, he follows me around and talks to me. It's way cute. We have just got permission from his parents, so tomorrow on Sunday, we are going to start teaching him the Gospel. That will be fun.

Today, we went to visit a buddhist temple. A lot of temples have some kind of theme to them. The theme for this last temple was gongs. There were tiny gongs that were 2 inches tall, and there were huge gongs that were 8 feet tall. There were mallets everywhere for hitting them too. Seriously, there were hundreds of gongs at this place. Then, last of all, there was the big momma gong. The biggest gong there was 33 feet tall. I looked like an ant next to it. The mallet for it was huge too. It is fun visiting the temples with some members because they know all about the culture and they tell us about it all while we walk around. 

This week was great, I love learning more about the culture here in Laos because I still don't know a lot. Love you all! Have a good week. 

-Elder Barron 

Settling In For The Long Run

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