Wild Ride This Week

This is one of the members who is about to go on her mission. I gave her this picture of the King of Thailand as a going away present. It was in our apartment. Haha!

Phone was baptized!  It was such a great day!

 I'm so excited for her!

 We played this balancing on each-others legs game. It was really funny.

My last sports night in Buriram.

 Selfie stick while riding bikes to a lesson we taught.

 This was my last time I got to visit Sister Nuu. She is one of the nicest ladies I have known. She told me when I come back in a year, she probably won't be alive. I hope that's not true.

 For dinner we got to eat at a market and it was really fun.

Fun family home evening with the members.

 We got to have our last district meeting here in Buriram. It was fun. I am going to miss Elder Siebert. My chairs keep getting shorter!

 I gave Elder Siebert this tie as a going away gift. He goes home in August.

Eating dinner with the members. 

They are so awesome.

  Fun time at the Bishops house.

 Our Bishop is so cool! 

He is the one taking the picture.

 I had to take some pics with this massive bush with yellow flowers all over it.

 

 I saw these goats and it reminded me of Texas.

The beautiful fountain. All the members thought I was full of myself because I was posing like this for the picture. Haha! It was funny.

 Some cool pics of Elder IIanera.

Trimming up our elephant.

 The Bishops son fell asleep and I thought he looked dead.

 Just did a successful bottle flip.

 Dinosaur sighting

Letter Update:

This week I feel like I am riding in a canoe down some white water rapids. If you try to follow the path that you want to go, you are gonna turn side ways and flip. You just gotta feel the current and follow it. No matter where it changes, just follow it. I thought I would be going to serve in Laos in another month and a half, but I got a call from President this last week and it was changed that I would be leaving for Laos today. Then, I got a call yesterday saying that I will actually serve in Bangkok for a few weeks before I go on to Laos. I don't know what is really going on, but I do know I have to pack my bags and leave Buriram. 

I am so sad to leave Buriram. I love all the people here so much and I have had so many people that are so nice to me and help me. I have learned so much from being here. I especially love the members who are keeping the ward here together. 

So on another really important note, I figured out that cows in Thailand don't make the Moo sound. I was talking to a member and making a joke about the sound a cow makes somehow, and I said Moo. Then they got way confused and said, "what are you doing. Cows don't make that sound." I was like what? What sound do they make then" and they said "maaaaw" It was way weird and it blew my mind a little bit. 

So one of our investigators named ฟรอด​(fraud) who was pretty strong stopped answering our calls about a month ago, and we were pretty sad. We wanted to meet with him. He randomly called us this week and said, "sorry I haven't answered your calls. I just got out of jail." That was unexpected. We got to meet him again and we taught about repentance and he loved it. He was so excited to repent.

There was a member named มอส​(moss) who called us and asked us to come bless his baby. His baby was born after only 7 months in the womb and so he was tiny. It was very strengthening of faith that the father had faith that giving the baby a blessing would help and make a difference.

This week, ฝน​ (phone(but it actually means rain)) got baptized. Everything went way well and the spirit was so strong I am so happy for her!

Alright I gotta go pack all my stuff so that I can leave Buriram tonight! I love you all and have a great week! 

-Elder Barron 

World War 3

 Biking home for the day.

 

 The student drew super heros for the day in class. Who do you think won the competition?

 A little market on the side of the street, things were seriously everywhere.

 Riding back to Buriram on the bus in the middle of the night after a zone conference.

 Some cool Buddhist stuff.

 Some random selfies.

 We helped a lady feed her chickens. This lady was so funny. I love doing service in any way.

 I caught this butterfly out of mid air and then set it free.

 What I would look like if I wore glasses.

Look Mom, I sewed up this hole in my bag! I am having fun repairing my stuff all by myself.

Update for the week:

Dang sometimes I really forget the amazingness of being here in Thailand being a missionary. There are just so many blessings from being here. I will never be able to explain all of them. I can definitely try though! Last P-day, we rode our bikes over to a mountain that is pretty close to us. At the bottom is a staircase that goes up forever

 At the very top, there is a massive Buddha statue and an AMAZING look out at the top. We woke up at 4:30 to ride our bikes there and go up the steps. Then we watched a stunning sunset from the lookout on the mountain. Everything about it was so beautiful. I could just feel the spirit as I was thinking of all the amazing things that God has created for his children to see. 

We have an awesome investigator named ฝน.​ She is so cool. We have been teaching her for 2 months now, and she is on track to get baptized next Sunday. I am praying that everything goes well! 

I am so tired this week. We had to ride busses last week for a total of 22 hours. It was a combination of having district meeting in Surin, an emergency call to come to Bangkok to so Visa work and stuff, and a Switchoff that we had in Roy-et. The hardest part of all of it is trying to use time wisely on the bus instead of just sleeping the whole time haha. 

I got to go on a switchoff this last week with Elder Borg. He is a missionary who used to be AP, and he is currently on his last transfer. He is going home in 10 days. It was really fun being able to learn from him and talk with him throughout that day. 

This last week we were eating some lunch over at Sister หนู​ (nu)​'s house. She is an older lady in our ward who got baptized just recently. Whenever we go visit her, she makes a lot of food for us. (I love going over there.) She loves to make jokes about how much I eat. Sometimes they don't make much sense, but they are always funny. This week she told me, "I bet when the World War 3 starts, everyone will be running around going crazy and killing each other, but Elder Barron will be sitting right here when he always is just eating food the whole time." I laughed for a good while on that one. 

One strange realization that I had when I was talking to one of my Thai friends, a lot of people who speak English says Asian voices sound so high pitched. I got asked by someone this last week why all white people have such low voices. A lot of them think we are the weird ones because our voices are strangely low while a lot of us think the opposite. I thought that was funny. 

I got a call from Bishop late on Saturday night asking if I could teach Second hour of church for the relief society and priest quorum. I didn't have any time to prepare, so I woke up early Sunday morning to prepare. I tried to center the lesson half off Come Follow Me and also a really good talk given by Brad Wilcox called "His Grace is Sufficient". If you haven't listened to it, or if you have already, you should totally listen to it (again). It is an amazing talk and really helps me to put being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in perspective. (it is on

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/brad-wilcox_his-grace-is-sufficient/?M=A

I really hope I said something that touched the hearts of the members and investigators listening. 

It was a really great week! I love the gospel. I know it is all true. I know The Book of Mormon is the word of God. I know that through Jesus Christ's grace we will be saved. I thank you all for being such a great support to me! 

-Elder Barron 

Squeekity Sqeek Skweekers Skweekums

 We got to go to a Buriram soccer game with some of the people we are teaching and some of the members of our church!

 It was a total blast!

 I got to eat some interesting foods.

 Buriram beat Lambang 4-1 ANNIALATION

 There was a sick sunset right in front of us.

This soup is called

ก้วยเตี๋ยวน้ำตกหมู​ (geuy diaw​ Nam thok Moo) it translates to waterfall pig soup. It was so good too.

 We went to a cool night market to eat dinner and invite people to hear of Christ.

 It was way fun. 

They also had this awesome fountain.

 Today I did my first sewing that I have ever done in my life. I sewed up a hole that popped up in my sock. My mother was so proud of me.

 Ether 12: 27 in Thai. Love that verse. It has literally changed my life. Here it is in english:

And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

 On P-day, Elder Llanera and I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and we hiked up this mountain to watch the sun rise. It was so so beautiful.

There was a concrete slide and I tried to ride down it, but it didn't work, so I just ran down it instead.

I got to help one of the young members when he was having a really hard day. He posted this on his Facebook story and it made me really happy.

 After watching the sun rise.

My Letter:

Just another great week in Buriram! This week was extremely busy, and I am so tired. It is all worth it though. Every time I think of all the good we are doing to help others, I am filled with energy to keep going. 

So we changed our P-day this last Monday to Wednesday so that we could go to a Buriram soccer game. It was so SO FUN! I'm so thankful that our Mission President said we are allowed to go! Buriram is also one of the best soccer teams in all of Thailand, so that makes it even better. Buriram beat Lambang 4 to 1. We also got to go to the game with a few members and investigators, so that was really fun strengthening our relationship with them. 

I was kind of sick this last Monday. It was really hard to do anything  because I had a raging headache, but I prayed and was able to work my hardest until it was night. 

So it is getting hard to write in my journal every day at the end of the day because I just keep getting more tired, and having more responsibility. I had a goal at the beginning of my mission to write in my journal every day, so every single day I have wrote a full page in it for 376 days, and I was about to change my goal to be just a half page a day. I was about to just stop at the half page in my journal, and then I just thought, "What the heck! Why would I just stop now if I haven't finished what I initially started?" I got mad at myself and repented because I want to finish the goals that I make. I wrote the whole page that day. 

I know that might sound a little bit cheesy, but I think it is not just that fact that I would be writing less in my journal, it is the fact that I wouldn't have finished my goals and things I strive for. It is honestly very hard to write in my journal every day, but I am going to do it because later on it will give me more confidence to finish those things I want to do. 

I had my last switch off with Elder Siebert that I will have on my mission. I is such a good missionary. I hope in the future I will have a strong knowledge of the scriptures as he does. He know SO much. When I was riding back to Buriram from our switch off, I think I was on the squeekiest bus I have ever been on in my life. Im sorry I can't describe it any further, but I really hope they are able to give that bus a bath in WD-40 some time in the near future. 

I was talking to a kid named Fresh who is a way cool member here in Buriram. He is about 14 years old, and he was just asking me a ton about how he can be a better son and how he can do better to follow Jesus Christ. It was a way good talk and now he keeps telling me about how excited he is to be a missionary in the future! It made me way happy when he told me his desire of doing that. 

I hope everyone's week is good one!

-Elder Barron