Cow Gra Doang!

 Elder Body and I

 Some friends that went to 

Cow Gra Doang with us.

 View from the top!

 Guys! This kid has a U of Arkansas hogs shirt on!!! He had no idea what it was but it made me happy!

 We have these vests that we wear in the rain so our shirts don't get stained while riding our bikes.

 A Buddhist Temple being built.

 People place food and drinks 

for the Buddhist Gods.

 I received this after chasing my ball into the woods. You can read about it in my letter.

 Teaching a class.

My Letter Home:

Last week on P-day was so much fun! We got to go to this one place called Cow Gra Doang. I had no idea what to expect when I was going to this place because nobody had described it to me yet. When I get there all I see is a massive staircase going up a mountain. It was like I was in Kung Fu Panda! When I got there, I tried to run up the stairs as fast as possible, and I got about half way up running, but by the time I got to the top, I almost died. It was so much taller than it looked from the bottom. The view from the top was way beautiful too. It was a perfectly cloudy day and the sun shining through the clouds was so cool. I brought a volleyball up the stairs too and tried to let it roll all the way down the stairs, and after it got about 1/3 of the way down, it was bouncing like crazy and hit a side rail and went way off into the woods. I had to go get it, so that was fun. There was a giant Buddha at the top of the mountain with was pretty cool too.

We have been focusing a lot with working with members. President Hammond told us that he wants us to "take the members on the journey of missionary work with us." I love that because if the members can feel the joy that we feel in the missionary work and then they will want to do it more with us. Our results will then be multiplied.

We found a new investigator this week named Teen. So we were just riding our bikes down a small street and Elder Body and I see a guy lying in a hammock on his phone. We go to the other side of the street to have a talk with him and he stands up when he sees us coming. I see his shirt and it blows my mind because this guy was wearing an Arkansas Razorback T-shirt!!!! Woooooo Pig Sooie! Teen had no idea what the shirt was even for, but somehow, this shirt traveled the ocean to Thailand and ended up in the hands of Teen, which gave me incentive to talk to him and now he has an opportunity to learn about Jesus! Talk about miracles!

There was a 18 year old kid we met this week who is a member, but he hasn't been to church in a super long time. Within the last 4 months, he got in a super bad motorcycle accident. Like really bad. His friend on the motorcycle died, and he couldn't walk or speak for a couple of months. When we visited him, he was able to walk and talk to us which was amazing. While I was talking with him, I got reminded about a ton of people in my life. Just a lot of people who have or are currently going through a lot of painful trials. This reminded me of how thankful I am for Jesus Christ and the resurrection. After this life, every single person who ever lived on this earth will be reunited with their bodies, so that they might be perfect as God is. We will get to see every person who has passed away in our lives including family and friends.

Everyone have a great week! 

-Elder Barron 

Bringing The World His Truth

Elder Body is one of my best friends.

English class.

 This place is called Cow Gra Doang, it made me feel like kung fu panda a little bit.

 Roi Et Zone-our awesome zone conference.

My Letter:

This last week has been totally great. I am having a good time with Elder Body my companion. 

Lately our Tuesdays have been pack full of things to do. We always have a district meeting at the beginning of Tuesday. District meetings are fun because it is a good way to kind of reset the week and get focused on missionary work again. It can get difficult to focus on work sometimes when we do it every day non stop, but when we can have district meeting with other missionaries, we get a spiritual boost to work for the next week again.

We had zone conference this past week too. (Another very good spiritual boost.) While we were about to leave to zone conference, we were late for the bus, but the other 2 elders in Buriram did make the bus. They called us and said, "YOU GUYS GOTTA GO! THE BUS JUST LEFT!" So we peeled out on our bikes and caught up to the bus while the other elders were asking them to stop the bus and wait for us. It was intense!

The focus of this zone conference was how everyone individually needs to know God better. This topic is very important because every single piece of truth in the gospel comes back to God and the fact that we are all children of God. One of my favorite things President Hammond told us is that the single most important fact that anyone will ever learn is that they, and everyone else, is a child of God. If this wasn't true, nothing else would be true. That makes me ask the question "If God knows me perfectly, how well do I know God?" We can all always get to know God more through prayer, reading the scriptures, and going to church.

Lately, Elder Body and I have 3 investigators who we feel like are progressing.

Their names are Bao, Alice, and Bahn.

Bao, is a guy who has learned a very long time ago with the missionaries, but dropped off. My first week here in Buriram, he just came up to us and said, I would like to start) learning again. Right now, he is doing very well, and it seems like he is making very good friends with the other members here in Buriram.

Alice, a young girl who comes to church every week with her grandmother. She is a very happy girl. I think she will get baptized fairly soon.

Bahn, we met him for the first time at his work, and just started talking to him. He has a wife and is the father of five children. Five children is unheard of here in Thailand. He is a very nice guy and he seems to like our message about families.

This area is doing pretty well as of now. We spend most of our time out on the streets of Thailand talking to everyone we can to teach them about their relationship with God and how it can help their life. It is absolutely the most fulfilling thing that I have done in my life and I have grown to be a better person because of it. There is nothing else that I would rather be doing right now.

Everyone have a great week! I love hearing from others and I thank you for reading my emails.

-Elder Barron 

Barriers

 This is our district.

 I make this meal a lot.

 A cool fountain in town.

 A shot of english class this week.

 Our district leader wiped out, but he's ok. Lol

My Letter:

Hello friends and family! This last week has been full of miracles and I can't wait to tell you about it! Alright let's get into it... Last P-day was way fun, we got to go to one of the members house and we played werewolf. I have seen many different versions of this game, and I am sure almost everyone has played it in some way, form, or fashion, but there is one narrator, and the narrator chooses who is the werewolf, hunter, doctor... And so on. But nobody knows who is what. Basically everyone has to vote each other out and the bad guy has to lie to win. It was a blast. The members here in Buriram are very fun people. When P-day was almost over, we decided to go do some inviting. We were just riding our bike around Buriram and stopping for all of the people we see to talk to them. At first we were finding no success whatsoever. We talked to different people for about 2 hours and we were just about tired out. We decided to go get some food and by the time we were done, we were just going to go home and rest. As we were riding home, I just had a feeling to turn down a random street and after about 10 seconds down that road my bikes back wheel just fell off. Like literally I don't know what happened, but all the sudden I crashed and I looked back and my back wheel was a few feet behind me. At this point it is already really dark outside and as I was putting the wheel back on, we started talking to a group of guys outside of their work smoking and drinking. They weren't really interested in learning about Jesus Christ, so we just started to go on our way, but right then, a man ran out of his shop and yelled "Elders!" I froze for a second because I didn't know how he knew us, but then he told us that he was baptized 16 years ago in a different city in Thailand and he stopped going to church and hasn't been to church in 14 years, but he wanted to go to church this Sunday. This guys name was Tiger. We were going crazy after that because we were so happy to have found him. English class here in Buriram is so much more fun than Surin because we have more people that show up to class. This last Tuesday was about 20 people. Since we have a good amount of people and we have 4 elders, we have 2 different classes. One is a beginners class and one is an advanced class. I take the beginners class because my companion needs to learn English too, but that means I am the only teacher in my class. It is definitely harder, but it is also fun because I can run the class. My goal is to make it as fun as possible. Last week there was a monk that came to our english class to learn with us. That was the first time I have ever taught a monk. He was about 16 years old and his name was Pan. Usually they don't come in because we teach in a church, but there is nothing wrong with them coming to learn at all! I had so much fun teaching him. There was one time I was randomly putting all the students together in groups and I just put Pan with a girl and everyone started yelling at me. I was just standing there confused for a minute while they were yelling at me and I finally figured out that monks aren't allowed to go within arms length of a girl. (woops) It's okay though because he came to our next class too and he brought his whole family that time! We are starting to have English class on Saturdays as well. There is a man that we are teaching named Bao and he is doing very well. He just kind of showed up at church one day and said he used to learn with the Elders, but he wants to learn again. He was ready to get a baptismal date, so we asked him when would be the most convenient for him and he chose April 14th. For Thai people, that is a BIG date because it is the day of ลงคราม​(Soang cram). For those of you who want to know what that is, I would ask you to keep reading my emails because you will definitely hear more about it in the future. There was a lot of points this week where I felt like we were working our very hardest and we weren't having anything good come out of it, but every time we just kept pushing even though we were tired, that is when the blessings start coming. I think that is the lesson I was supposed to learn this week. We have a physical barrier and a mental barrier. Everyone hits the mental barrier first and has the feeling of, "okay I tried, but I am done now." But what our mind doesn't know, is that our body still has more in us. We need to ignite that inner fire and just go until our body is done. I know that this concept can be used in almost every part of life, so I invite everyone to think of where in your life you feel as though you are falling down at your mental barrier, but inside you actually have more and you can do better than before, and then try to change that part of your life! It can always be better and I know that my relationship with God has helped me in every part of my life. I know I am nowhere close to perfect, but through following God's plan for us, we eventually can be! Have a good week! -Elder Barron