We are teaching these two kids and they are about to be baptized in December.

Cool sunset.

This was a full rainbow that was so cool. 

It was a lot more noticeable in real life.

Me and Elder Holms.

Cool sunset

Sister Hammond took this picture 

during the zone conference.

This is a new convert to the church named Brother Sing Tong and his son named Kay and his baby girl.

More random pictures taken by our students.

A cool dragon in front of a Buddhist temple.

One of our students had a birthday and so they made food and this is what it was. I have figured out that a lot of Lao food can be gross unless you learn how to eat it. At home I would like to eat all of one thing on my plate, but here you can't do that. Everything has super strong and different tastes and you have to get good knowing what goes with what and how much of each thing goes into each bite. It's a science. I'm not as good at it as Lao people but I am getting better at it.

Birthday party.

More student pics.

The Mekhong is the river that divides Thailand and Laos.

We got to go to a Hmong reception this week. This was the food. Just a massive pot.

It was in the middle of nowhere.

Little buddha statues.

My Letter:

So these past few weeks we have been planning a ton of projects to do. Some things that we have been doing lately are:

1) Translating the children's songbook into Lao and photoshopping it to look super official. After we are done with that, we are going to print it into nice books because their current songs are very bad quality/ falling apart.

2) We are teaching a temple prep class after church for the members who currently have a date set up to go to the temple soon. 

3) We are preparing for the Christmas program that is going to be coming up. We still have to talk to the Relief Society President and see what she has planned, so we can help them out. This includes holding choir practice after church on Sunday.

4) The Family History work is still going strong. We are trying to keep it steady and do about 2 or 3 people at a time.

5) After the Christmas program is over we are planning to have an addiction recovery class and a life skills class after church for the members started up. Each companionship will take care of one of the classes. 

These are a lot of things and we have to do all of them on Sunday after church. I don't think we have too much on our plate just yet, but if we don't plan it out well, we might not be able to do all of these things.

I know this is the true church, and the strength that I see in the members here in Laos just strengthened my faith so much!

-Elder Barron

 We signed a contract to teach English with Mahosot Hospital. We start teaching their doctor staff in Febraury.

 Visiting a buddhist temple. It was really cool.

 Activity we had cleaning our church.

 This is a selfie we took at a church activity. They always make me take these because I have long arms. Haha 

 A funny meme because Laos is land locked.

 The Area Presidency and Mission President came to visit Laos and we had a devotional at the church.

The students love to secretly snap pictures of us and send them to our group chat with everyone.

 I wrote down all the animals I knew in Laotian and English and that was our lesson for the day.

We gave our students treats for Halloween and they wanted to take a picture.

The door of a Buddhist Temple.

My Letter:

Every once in a while, the senior couple of english teachers who teach class right next to us are busy and they don't make it to english class. In those times, Elder Holm who usually teaches with me switches classrooms to cover for them, and I stay in our normal classroom and teach by myself. You would think that teaching English without your usual partner is twice as hard as teaching with them. This is not true. It is much harder. What we usually do is one of us starts teaching while the other one is supporting and thinking about the next part of the lesson, so when whoever is tired of teaching, or runs out of ideas, we switch. This takes about 15-30 minute intervals while we teach, so we keep doing this until class is over. With teaching by yourself, you have to be standing up teaching for a full 90 minutes and constantly thinking about what are teaching next and how you are gonna do it. That just strengthened my testimony of the importance of having a companion in life. (Having a teaching companion as I go about on my mission and also having a wife when I start a family.) It doesn't only cut the work load off by half. It's much more than that. 

Next summer in Thailand, the church is hosting an FSY summer camp for all the youth that want to go! It is combining Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar. I am so excited for them because all of the youth in the corners of the countries who feel like they are alone in the church will meet new friends from all across the country and know there are others who are in their same situation. It will help the youth to have more friends who are members of the church around them instead of only being friends with people from America who served as missionaries there.

I got to interview with President Hammond recently. This was the first time I interviewed with him in Laos. He had a meeting with the government, so President was in Laos for a little bit. It was cool to see him here. I shared with him an idea I had received lately. I want to start an addiction recovery program here in Laos. There are so many people that I see with the fire and motivation to stop drinking, but they are all alone trying to do it. They do a great job trying to stop, but after a while they get burned out with nobody to help them when they feel weak. If we started a group meeting together, it would help them to be strong and bring their friends who also want to stop. President took that idea to the Area Presidency for southeast Asia and said they thought it was a good idea, but it would take a lot more planning and time before it got started. President told us to start working it out and do it as soon as possible.

We were teaching an investigator named Lah. She is the daughter of a member, and she has only come two times to church, but in our lesson with her, she expressed an interest in being a missionary, so that is awesome.

Noah and I had a lot of fun teaching all of our english classes about Halloween. They all had heard about it a ton from facebook, but they had no idea what we do to celebrate. We taught them that little kids had to say trick or treat in order to get their candy, so we told them, "alright, on the count of three, say trick or treat. One, two, three..." "trick or treat" "Oh.. cooome ooooon, that was weak. Come on. Give me some more umph this time! One, two, three!" "TRICK OR TREAT!!!" Then we brought out some treats we bought for all of them. It was pretty fun.

Have a good week!

-Elder Barron

I'm getting a lot better at writing on the board. This is the study guide for the speaking portion of the midterm tests.

We went to a festival called "Loy Gra Toang". There were SOOO many people there.

This is a member of our church who was in a motorcycle accident. We went to visit him and cheer him up at the hospital. He broke his femur and it will be a rough recovery. It was sad.

"Loy Gra Toang" festival.

Halloween Party

My companion

My Update Letter:

One of the goals I made at the beginning of my mission was to write in my journal every single day of my mission. I had never wrote in my journal previously, so it was quite a feat to write every day for 730 days. It wasn't too hard at the beginning of my mission, but slowly, things would start coming up at the time I was going to write my journal, and it got harder. I would miss writing before I sleep like I usually do, so I would take time out of my morning routine to write it, or I would write it the next night. Then I would get more and more behind. Its a vicious cycle folks. I always found the days I am not caught up would be so much more stressful than other days. There was one time I got 5 days behind in my journal. oof. I almost gave up on writing in my journal every day, I thought about how far I have come. I have wrote in my journal 498 days straight. My point is that I am just testifying of the importance of making goals, and DOING IT. Completing your goals should be very important because you will create habits of always completing the goals you make no matter what they are. Just imagine what would be different if you were diligent enough to complete or at least give all you have to every goal you make. Dang I wish I was. That's why we learn though. I feel like I learn the most personal lessons on my mission while I write these letters. hah. It's my "thinkie boy time". 

We had midterm tests in our English classes this week. It is weird being on the other side of the desk while big tests are going on. I can see the fear of the students as I talk to them and walk around. It is so easy to see cheating during the test. After the test, I will get students coming up to me saying, "I don't think you ever taught us this question in the test." But I can remember exactly when we taught it and went over it again. They use a lot of excuses that I used growing up. haha. Don't cheat in school. It is not worth it. Also be nice to your teachers ;)

We got invited to a Halloween party hosted by a member. I ran a game at the party where we tied donuts to strings and everyone had to eat it with no hands. It was pretty funny. There was one kid who literally swallowed the donut whole. He won.

It was a good week. We are praying that we can have investigators come to church from the members. Elder Homes and I are starting to get the Christmas program planned out. We are going to start choir practice for it next Sunday. (Something I never thought I'd do.) Haha!

Have a good week y'all

-Elder Barron