Weeks are flying by

 Teaching class

 Group picture of our Friday night social 

at the church.

 Totally awesome zone conference.

 Lunch at the zone conference.

 We rarely get to ride in cars so I took a pick of this cool car that we rode in.

 This is my favorite kid in the ward. 

His name is Adam and he is hilarious. 

(I found this on my phone.)

This guy reminded me of Daddy because he was playing the guitar and had a harmonica holder around his neck that he was playing too.

A tiny Sister missionary in our district. 

She may be small but she is not boring.

Update:

This week has been fully of amazing miracles! We have been teaching this guy lately who's name sounds like Ong. He is very interested in learning about The Book of Mormon. He has a lot of faith when we teach him about God. He always tells us that he believes God helps him in life and so he wants to learn more about Him to understand His ways and why Ong is here on this Earth. As missionaries, we go on missions for the reason of helping others to come unto Christ. I do this because I know The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true. Even if I knew nobody would listen to me at all, I would still go on a mission and do my very best to serve. People like Ong are blessings along the way because they have the humility and understanding to try to change their lives for the better and be baptized following in the example of our savior Jesus Christ. I am so thankful for this knowledge that I have received at a young age so that I am able to serve God in this way. I know for a fact that so far in my life, this is going to be the best 2 years!

Bangkapi has really been really fun lately. Our district has been playing a ton of basketball at our church lately on our preparation day. Elder Sudekum is a new Elder in our district and he is very good at basketball. I have so much fun playing with them because it is very hard to find good basketball in Thailand. YES!!! It’s so fun!

Every once and a while we have to ride a taxi, and it is so tight in the taxi. We have a 6' 5" guy in the car, a 6' 6" guy, and a 225 pound other guy. Whenever we all ride in the back in a taxi, we barely fit. It would be funny to see, but I'm not gonna take a picture of it.

As missionaries, we get the opportunity to work a lot with the members of our church congregation. There is one member that we visited this week named Golf. He is a super nice guy and he just barely had his first child. We talked to him for a bit about how he was doing and how his family was and we shared a spiritual thought with him. When we were about to leave, he asked us if we could stay longer and eat dinner with him and his wife, so we accepted. While we were waiting for dinner, Brother Golf took us to a room in his house and showed us this mirror, Elder Killian and I didn't really understand what he was doing, but all the sudden, Golf took out this card key and put it against the wall AND THE MIRROR SLIDES OFF AND THERE IS A SECRET ROOM! It was so surprising I almost popped. He had a ton of awesome guns, bows and arrows, and other awesome manly things. It was so fun looking at everything. Then we found out that he ordered us KFC. That chicken was amazing!

I love you everyone, thanks for reading my letter. Have a great week!

-Elder Barron 

It was a great week!

All my change.

Pretty sunset

On our one day off this week we got to go to a place called "Dream World"(Thai Disneyland. =)). It was tons of fun!

This is the strongest man in Thailand. 

(Yes I wear a fanny pack like my Mom now.)

Me showing an old man the way.

Us eating at Subway-seemed like the lost amazing taste in the world at that moment.

Update:

Hello Everyone!

This week was a good week. We worked really hard. I also got to watch the second half of general conference, which was great. There were many great talks by our church leaders. Watching general conference always strengthens my testimony that God has called Prophets on the Earth in these days to be the leader of his church.

I know that this church is true and there is no way I could be here in Thailand speaking Thai without the help of God. I have been blessed so much as I have been sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ here in Thailand. I will use all the time here to the best of my ability and always remember the real reason why I am here. To bring souls unto Christ.

-Elder Barron 

I will DUNK on you someday.

This is at a Birthday party for a guy in my ward named Butter.

A boat that rides on the canal 
called the Klang Monster.

 This was a really tall Thai person that I saw. I asked if I could take a picture with him  and as you can see by the look on his face, he thought it was weird.

 A giant Croc that was on display.

 Celebrating Sister Rogers and 

Elder Steele's birthdays!

 A really cool sunset.

A pretty street.

Weekly Update:

This was an interesting week. It was a first for me because this weekend was our churches worldwide General Conference. General Conference is like New Years Eve for all of us missionaries. We were so excited to hear about what our prophets were going to teach us. I haven't been able to see the second half of it yet, but I have already learned a lot and I love the messages our General Authorities have shared. My favorite speaker of General Conference so far was by Dallin H. Oaks. He gave a talk about the where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints stands on some of the biggest controversial topics in the world today. Elder Oaks explained very specifically and simply. If anyone is interested in watching it, you can go to lds.org and watch it for free. There are plenty more things on lds.org that can answer many questions you have about what our church believes.

This week had a lot of rain. There was a pretty big rainstorm about every other day. One day, we were going to a members house to eat dinner and it was storming super hard. We arrived there super soaked and we had to eat some of the spiciest soam dam I have ever had. (soam dam is like a kind of salad made out of unripe papaya and you put in a ton of peppers to make it super spicy.) I have eaten soam dam with 7 peppers before and even that was really spicy, but this member fed us 20 pepper soam dam. DANG it was spicy! I ate a ton of it and afterwards my companion said I would have stomach trouble, but I never ended up having it. He was surprised. Anyways, after we finished eating and shared a personal thought with the family, we caught a bus ride, but the whole street was flooded. There were cars that were stalled and the motorcycles were all on sidewalks trying to avoid the flooding. It was really fun. 

This week we celebrated my old companion, Elder Steele’s birthday. He got a bunch of really good presents. The sister missionaries gave him a bar of soap, and I gave him all of my half and quarter baht coins that I had. (the only time you get them is when you buy milk or use the bus. They are so worthless that nobody wants them.) Then we sprayed him down with silly string and gave him a cake. It was probably his best birthday yet. 

I had the opportunity to have an interview with my Mission President, President Hammond this week. He started talking to me about basketball and how he used to play way too much basketball, so God gave him a blessing in disguise by hurting his back so now he spends more time on work instead of basketball. One of my favorite quotes from him was, "Just remember Elder Barron, I'm going to DUNK on you after the resurrection!" It was really funny. We believe that every person will be resurrected after death with their body and everyone will become the perfect version of themselves.

I have made some massive strides in the language in the last few weeks. I am able to have conversations with people on the street. There is still a lot when I don't understand a word here and there, but I can understand what they were saying and respond most of the time. It feels amazing actually being able to speak Thai. I love it.

This week Elder Killian and I met this woman and her son named Krystal and Conor. They were very interesting people. The mom, Krystal, has been going to learn English with the missionaries since she was 12 years old, and she became interested in leading about Jesus Christ and learned for a while. She stopped learning in though because she didn't like how one of the Elders acted hypocritical with what he taught, but lately she decided to give learning about our church another shot. Now, she brings her son to learn with us too. 

I give a challenge to everyone; if you haven't ever tried learning about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, just give it a shot. You shouldn't believe only what other people say about things that require straight opinion. You must take it upon yourself to find the answer and then act upon the answers you receive from God in every way you can. God knows your abilities and He expects us to use them to help ourselves and when you can support yourself, you can support others. That is my favorite thing about being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It takes some personal growth to have a testimony and believe it is true, but everyone can help you. When everyone has a strong testimony of this church, they support each other and multiply in spiritual strength. 

I hope everyone has a great week! Please tell me about it! I love getting emails from everyone.

-Elder Barron 

Blessings In Disguise

Our church congregation threw a 

party for the new missionaries. 

This is our scripture study class.

This is also our scripture study class....playing NINJA!

This is our church building.

Some of the Sisters in our Ward.

Our District got lunch after bowling on preparation day. It was way fun.

 I was so happy to see my best buds from the MTC when we all had to renew our Visa's.

Cool beetle I found.

After my epic bowling victory.

My Letter this week:

Last Monday, (Every Monday is our Preparation day), I got to go bowling with my district. I have never been good at bowling at all. I have taken two girls on dates and they beat me both times. It has never been my sport, but this time, I don't know what happened. I got 4 strikes in a row and everyone was freaking out. (Including me) I ended up getting 165 which is like double the best I have ever gotten in bowling. It was really fun.

This transfer, there are now 4 Elders living in my house instead of just 2 like last transfer. It is so much more fun because we can wake up early for our exercise time and go play basketball at our church. I love working with these Elders because they are all very different, but effective in being missionaries.

Elder Killian and I have had to start from scratch searching for people to teach about the Gospel because we are an added companionship in the area. So we spend a lot of time doing what we call "finding". It is where we basically walk around neighborhoods, parks, mall, streets, and wherever trying to talk to everyone and invite them to learn about Jesus Christ and His gospel. Finding is probably the most infamous parts of being a missionary because it is very hard to talk to people who look busy and get them interested in learning about religion. It is also very hard because of the language barrier. There are sometimes I don't know what people are saying, so I just have to guess and keep talking. It is a leap of faith that God will help me speak the language and that the person who I talk to will have a softened heart and listen to our message. 

This week I had to travel to this government building and renew my Visa, so I could stay in Thailand, and I got to see all my friends from the MTC there. They are all so much fun and I had so much fun seeing them again. We also got to be with each other for like 5 hours because we were waiting in a ton of lines. They are all so funny and smart, when I'm with them, they make me want to be better.

The brand new Elder in our house that came straight from the training center is named Elder Thomas. He tried to fix one of our showers that wouldn't shoot out any hot water. He started taking apart all the electrical stuff and from the next room over I just heard him yell because he got shocked by this thing. He was just sticking this screwdriver into the electrical box trying to tighten things and he ended up getting shocked really hard 4 different times. I was just lying on my bed laughing my head off because he wouldn't stop sticking his screwdriver in there.

While I was sitting on a bus this week, I was trying to talk to someone and ask them some questions, but he wouldn't respond to me or even make eye contact. I was just having a one way conversation with him for a while, and he didn't respond, so I told him a joke in Thai. I said, "what has no beginning, no middle, and no end?" he didn't respond so I told him. "It's a donut." He didn't respond again so I just got off the bus. Haha...life of a missionary.

I get the question a lot about why would God let bad things happen to good people and that has always been a hard question to answer. One of my favorite quotes to answer this question is by George W. Cannon. He says, "That is why God tries all of us. It is not for His own knowledge for He knows all things beforehand. He knows all your lives and everything you will do. But He tries us for our own good that we may know ourselves; for it is most important that a man should know for himself." Tests that we have in life are blessings in disguise. After this life, our glory will be added upon as we fulfill goodness and faith in this life. I know this to be true and thank you all for reading my letters.

-Elder Barron