Happy Thanksgiving!

 A waterfall that we hiked to on our day off.

 My students send me a ton of random pictures of me teaching. It's funny how many pictures they take.

 We got taken out to dinner and I had this super delicious Thanksgiving Sandwich.

 This kid dodged my picture at the 

ward Christmas party.

 We organized a bunch of games at the party. 

It was so fun.

 This is sticky rice cooked in a bamboo chute.

My Letter:

This was an awesome week. Especially on the front of food. We got to go over to the Kowallis's apartment to have some Thanksgiving dinner. They found a turkey somewhere in Laos that was actually imported from Utah. It was so dang good. I really enjoy gravy too. When we were done eating, they gave us all the leftovers. I had some leftover Thanksgiving dinner for breakfast almost every day this week. Haha. I love the Kowalises! They are so nice to us.

Aping got baptized this week. She is awesome. She is really smart with the gospel already. All the members laughed when we took the baptismal picture because I am so much taller than her.

This week we got to know the Sessions family a lot better. We had family home evening over at their house and they also made a Thanksgiving dinner. It was amazing as well. Afterwards, we got to draw something we were grateful for and share it with the family. We got to watch the new video made by the church called The Christ Child. That video is so realistic. I love it. Here's the link if you want to watch it. It's just about the birth of Jesus Christ according to the bible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXWoKi5x3lw 

For Thanksgiving, the American Embassy played some football in the morning and the Sessions invited us to go play. Chandler and I went. It felt like I was really back in America for a second. The only difference is normally Thanksgiving football is pretty chilly, but here in Laos it was still searing hot, so we didn't play super long in order to save our skin.

We were visiting a member named Sing Tong when he said he didn't have a lot of time because he had to go play a soccer game. Apparently he is the coach of a soccer team, and I never knew this. Then, he asked me if I knew how to play as a goalie, and I said yes. So he took us with him to go play. I thought it was just going to be normal playing around and such, but no. It was a serious game. I was OK at not letting them get a goal, but I had no idea how the flow of the game was, or when I should punt the ball off or just kick it closer to a team mate. I had never played goalie before. There was also no boxes drawn on the ground to show me how far I could go out and still touch the ball. I had no idea. I could tell my team was kind of irritated that I was playing. It was kind of embarrassing haha. They ended up switching me out and someone else came in as goalie. I learned that I should not just jump into things and say I can do them when I can't actually do it. Cause then it's going to quickly come back to bite you. It was fun though. I would like to play again after someone explained some rules to me haha.

This next week I will hit my "been on a mission for 18 months so do the stanky leg" mark. Pretty exciting.

-Elder Barron

 I found this little cat and it's eye was stuck shut, so I opened it and everyone said I probably have diseases now.

 This was an event called "That Luang". All the monks in in all of Laos came to the same place.

 We got there at 5 in the morning to see all of it. Everyone was there way earlier them we were and set up in their spots.

 They all put out their own pot and everyone walks around putting money or rice or other stuff in their pot.

 This is called a "stoopas". It actually has the bones of some ancestors inside who must have been really rich. Everyone gets a candle and walks around in inside of it 3 times. One of our church members who was with us said that when she was a little girl, she accidentally lit one of the women's hair on fire in front of her.

 They are in the process of building a new sculpture and this is a picture of what it is going to look like finished.

 Another Buddhist temple. 

 The 4 Lao Missionaries.

 Sunset at dinner time.

 These are called "Gerudas". They are supposed to be holding the building up. 

 This picture is in the inside of a Patuxay.

 Some members served us these fried birds. 

All they did was remove the feathers. They told us to just eat the bones.

 We were invited to a Lao wedding. 

 I ate that whole bird.

 We had a lot of fun visiting this family. I just finished doing the dishes and I forgot to take my tie out of my shirt.

 This is a Buddhist funeral.

 This is in front of a Patuxay.

 We had an event where we gave out eye glasses. Here are some pics from it.

 We were learning how at assemble the new wheelchair design that our church gives to people in need. 

 I am related to the senior couple here! 

Sister Kowallis and I are cousins!

My Letter:

Lately, here in Laos, we had something called the "That Luang Festival". This is apparently the biggest festival all year. In the middle of Vientiane, there is a giant golden stupa. It looks like a Lao, golden temple. Inside of that, everyone believes there are some of the bones of Buddha. They do a lot of their worship to that stupa. For the festival, every monk in all of Laos came to the stupa. I don't know the exact number, but I would guess it is in the two thousands. It was a really cool sight to see. We woke up at 5 am to go walk around and see it all. Everyone was getting really excited for the fireworks, so we were getting kind of hyped for it too. When the fireworks went off, it was so small...  Not like what we are used to in America.  

We have visited some awesome members lately. A lot of them went to the church before the church got shut down in Laos a few years ago, but when the church got opened back up, a lot of the members didn't come back. We are trying to visit those people a lot.

Usually we get to church about 30 minutes before hand to prepare stuff, but last week, we decided to get there an hour early to talk to more people. I was really surprised how many people actually still were there at church before we were. There were a lot of little girls who were practicing dancing for the Christmas program coming up, so I asked for them to teach me some of the dances. That was way fun haha.

I'm practicing guitar more.  I am working on more of a fingerpicking style where I just follow the notes on the line, but I also enjoy playing chords.

We got to go to a three day workshop about how to build wheelchairs last week. There were three guys (Boyd, Andy, and Chris) who all came straight out of Utah who came here to do the workshop. They were all about in their 70s, rough guesstimate.  Anyways, I had so much fun being their translator as they walked around helping the technicians how to build these special new wheelchairs produced and donated by the church. For part of the workshop, we actually got to hand out some wheelchairs with people who couldn't walk and teach them how to use these new ones. I got a lot of pictures, so have fun with it.

-Love 

Elder Barron

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