I found this little cat and it's eye was stuck shut, so I opened it and everyone said I probably have diseases now.
This was an event called "That Luang". All the monks in in all of Laos came to the same place.
We got there at 5 in the morning to see all of it. Everyone was there way earlier them we were and set up in their spots.
They all put out their own pot and everyone walks around putting money or rice or other stuff in their pot.
This is called a "stoopas". It actually has the bones of some ancestors inside who must have been really rich. Everyone gets a candle and walks around in inside of it 3 times. One of our church members who was with us said that when she was a little girl, she accidentally lit one of the women's hair on fire in front of her.
They are in the process of building a new sculpture and this is a picture of what it is going to look like finished.
Another Buddhist temple.
The 4 Lao Missionaries.
Sunset at dinner time.
These are called "Gerudas". They are supposed to be holding the building up.
This picture is in the inside of a Patuxay.
Some members served us these fried birds.
All they did was remove the feathers. They told us to just eat the bones.
We were invited to a Lao wedding.
I ate that whole bird.
We had a lot of fun visiting this family. I just finished doing the dishes and I forgot to take my tie out of my shirt.
This is a Buddhist funeral.
This is in front of a Patuxay.
We had an event where we gave out eye glasses. Here are some pics from it.
We were learning how at assemble the new wheelchair design that our church gives to people in need.
I am related to the senior couple here!
Sister Kowallis and I are cousins!
My Letter:
Lately, here in Laos, we had something called the "That Luang Festival". This is apparently the biggest festival all year. In the middle of Vientiane, there is a giant golden stupa. It looks like a Lao, golden temple. Inside of that, everyone believes there are some of the bones of Buddha. They do a lot of their worship to that stupa. For the festival, every monk in all of Laos came to the stupa. I don't know the exact number, but I would guess it is in the two thousands. It was a really cool sight to see. We woke up at 5 am to go walk around and see it all. Everyone was getting really excited for the fireworks, so we were getting kind of hyped for it too. When the fireworks went off, it was so small... Not like what we are used to in America.
We have visited some awesome members lately. A lot of them went to the church before the church got shut down in Laos a few years ago, but when the church got opened back up, a lot of the members didn't come back. We are trying to visit those people a lot.
Usually we get to church about 30 minutes before hand to prepare stuff, but last week, we decided to get there an hour early to talk to more people. I was really surprised how many people actually still were there at church before we were. There were a lot of little girls who were practicing dancing for the Christmas program coming up, so I asked for them to teach me some of the dances. That was way fun haha.
I'm practicing guitar more. I am working on more of a fingerpicking style where I just follow the notes on the line, but I also enjoy playing chords.
We got to go to a three day workshop about how to build wheelchairs last week. There were three guys (Boyd, Andy, and Chris) who all came straight out of Utah who came here to do the workshop. They were all about in their 70s, rough guesstimate. Anyways, I had so much fun being their translator as they walked around helping the technicians how to build these special new wheelchairs produced and donated by the church. For part of the workshop, we actually got to hand out some wheelchairs with people who couldn't walk and teach them how to use these new ones. I got a lot of pictures, so have fun with it.
-Love
Elder Barron
