We went down to the river to take some pictures. 

We are some legit photographers.

We were being creative.

This is the path we took to the river.

That dragon thing is across the river in Thailand.

This was on a plane ride to Bangkok for Visa stuff.

 Inside the airport they had some cool golem statues to protect the people.

 A picture of Chandler Coomes. What a man.

 This is Boonlouam. 

A great member of the church.

 A group picture with a dam behind us.

 Noah teaching.

Sometimes their translations are funny.

This weeks update:

One way Noah and I have been trying to do work is doing family history with the members. So far we have helped three people to put their family trees online on familysearch.org.  I am having SO MUCH FUN helping them. It is pretty cool how good people feel when they can type their grandparents names online with their children and just see it connected to their own name. We were helping a 74 year old man, his tree was so interesting. His name is Boonlouam. His grandparents were born in 1900. He had 2 siblings who were alive, but everyone else who we put in information for, had died already. None of Boon's siblings are members, so they will probably never get the chance to put in their information. If Boon died without putting his family history online, that would be information that would be gone. No way to get it back. Laos keeps no sort of records about family history. Noah and I are trying to help at least 1 member every week to put in their information.

There is a young man from Vientiane Laos 2nd branch who recently left on his mission. His name is Tiger. Usually, the missionaries coming out of Thailand and Laos serve in Thailand for a month while their visa gets worked out. Tiger is called to go to Texas soon, but he has been in Thailand waiting for his visa. For some reason, he had to fly up to Laos for a short time to do some visa stuff, so he came up in this last week and stayed with us for a few days. He is the first full Laos person to serve in Laos. Which is so cool. He has left and is about to go to America, but it was just really fun to be with him and go around to all of our classes with him.

Noah and I had an interesting thing happen to us as we were going to teach an English class. I was about 20 yards ahead of Noah and we were on our bikes and a big truck rolls up next to Noah. This guy is wearing big black sunglasses and looked like he was Laotian. This guy yells at Noah, "Hey, are you guys mormons?" (Whenever people ask us this on the street, it is very scary because it is illegal to proselyte our church at all. For instance, this man could easily have been a spy for the government trying to get us to say something illegal. Those guys exist and we have to deal with them every once in a while.) Noah said, "We are English teachers who work for Deseret International Charities." (We don't lie at all. We also don't do anything illegal. The rules are just strict.) Then he said, "Yeah, are you mormons?" "Yes, we are members of the church, but we are not missionaries teaching people about it." "Well, can I talk to you?" "Um... you can follow us to our class that we are about to teach and we can talk some more." "okay." So this guy follows us in his truck to our English class. We get to know him some more and he says he is from California and he used to learn about our church from guys who wear the same clothes as us. Then he moved to Laos and became a member of a different church that was nationally recognized as a church in Laos, unlike our church. (Basically, the rules don't change for this other Christian church than for us for being nationally recognized, but they appear on the map, and they can be more blatant about where they are. I'm not super sure what all the differences of being nationally recognized are, but I know that our some leaders in our church are coming to Laos in the next few months to try to get it nationally recognized. That would be awesome.) We tell this guy that we aren't allowed to tell him anything about our church unless we are literally in the church building, so we got his Facebook, sent him the location of the church, and told him what time it starts.  Last Sunday, that same guy showed up after church and we got to give him a tour and give him a Book of Mormon to read from. 

This last week, my visa was about to expire in Thailand. I got to fly back to Thailand to renew it with all of my friends from our MTC group. Two of them weren't there, so that was really sad, but it was a blast. I remember being in the exact same place a year ago, seeing all the older missionaries. Time is passing and it just feels weird. Until next week.

-Elder Boston Barron

Beautiful Laos

Look at this way cool pano. You can see the sunset and the light on the right and you can see the moon rise and the darkness on the left. I'm also in the picture twice so that's lit.

 A member named Joe's car wouldn't start so we pushed it until it started. He took this picture of us.

 A few random pictures of Laos as we drove.

 We drove to Northern Laos. 

There were some really cool mountains and trees.

   On our P-day we hiked up a flippin high mountain and explored a cool cave. It took us 2 hours to hike up the mountain. The whole thing was way steep and super muddy. A ton of people slipped and got scratches and cuts. 

This is a view from the top. 

 This is the staircase going to the cave entrance.

 Elder Holms took some boof selfies on my phone.

 Inside the cave. 

 Some legit Laos stuff.

 This bridge is orange.

 More views.

 Our district in the cave.

 More legit Laos stuff.

My Letter:

This last week we had fast Sunday. I really love fast Sundays because we fast or don't eat food for 24 hours and we do this to show obedience to God's commandments. We also give the money for the meals that we would have eaten to the church which is then given to people who are in desperate need of help. You might have the question, "Why is not eating for 24 hours something you love to do?" Well that is a good question. The key is doing it in obedience to God. If you just don't eat food, that is just starving yourself. Before I start fasting, I will pray to God and tell him that I am starting my fast, and I will also pray for some things that I want to think about while I am fasting. I find that I have a clearer mind when I fast. A lot of times in life our physical desires can be strong and they can be stronger than our desires for the things we know that we need. Fasting helps our spirit to be stronger and we can overcome the earthly desires. I have had so many cool experiences with fasting and this is why I love it.

At church for every fast Sunday, (first Sunday of each month) we have a testimony meeting at church. For about 40 minutes, anyone at all can stand in front of the congregation and share their beliefs to everyone, or experiences that they have had to strengthen their testimony. It is the exact same thing here in Laos on the other side of the world as back home in Arkansas. Anyways, we just started teaching this new person about the gospel lately. His name is Kay. He just barely turned 8 years old and his grandfather just recently got baptized. He has been coming to church for about 8 Sundays now. Kay and his grandfather, SingTong, sit in the very front seats every Sunday, so that is cool. Kay has already made really good friends in the church and two of them, little 7 year old girls, run up to the front and grab Kay. They drag him up to the stand where there is a microphone and the whole congregation is watching. The two little girls who are his friends make him say his testimony into the microphone. He doesn't know what to say, so the girls whisper in his ear what to say. It was one of the cutest little things I had ever seen.

We had zone conference this week, but our zone is in Thailand, so we had to get a ton of visa/passport stuff worked out and cross the border to go to zone conference. It is a big trip, and brain tiring, but it is so much fun to be back in Thailand for a bit though. 

We talked a lot about the priesthood, which is the power of God bestowed upon those who are worthy to have it. One of my favorite parts was talking about the differences of the church here in Thailand and Laos and America. The church is still very new in Thailand and Laos, and sometimes it seems like the white, American people have the strongest priesthood and the most authority to use it, but that is dead wrong. A new member who lives in the back corners of the earth in Laos has just as much power as a nice old man living in the center of Utah who hasn't missed a day of church in years. (as long as they are both worthy to use it.) I think us, being missionaries, know this fairly well, but those new members who live in Thailand and Laos don't know that. I want to try to focus for the next while to teach the members this truth. Hopefully it will give them more of a desire to be worthy of this by following the commandments.

We started another English class this week. It is at a place called CMR. We teach beginner every Monday and Wednesday and we teach intermediate every Tuesday and Thursday. Our schedule is starting to be very full, so that is fun. I enjoy teaching. 

Hope you all have a good week,

-Elder Barron 

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