Happy National Laos Day!

On National Laos Day we went to a members house and had a meal together to celebrate.

On Tuesdays, there is a place that sells cheap tacos and they are dang good. I always get 4.

We got to meet the featherweight boxing champion of the world. His name is Walter Samoi (his nickname is "school boy" because he is one of the only professional boxers who has his college degree.) He plans to fight for Laos in the coming Olympics.

We all rode together in a tuk tuk to a restaurant to celebrate Scott Kowallis's birthday.

Sok Dee Mark means "Good Luck Mart"

Wearing traditional Hmong cloths.

This is a traditional Hmong corn crushing machine.

These kids are at church getting ready for the nativity. They are playing the three kings getting ready to meet the Baby Jesus.

I found this purple bug and dedicate it to Quincey.

I bonded with this kitten.

"School Boy's" belt

Baptism of Ahping.

Thanksgiving at the Session's house.

More pics of games at the ward party.

We all ate a picnic together.

The guys.

Visiting some members.

 They guy in blue is awesome.

Decorating a Christmas tree at the church.

We shook the rug and this came out.

National Laos Day! Laos is so awesome!

We got to see some bull fights.

Some delicious fast food.

Celebrating the Branch Presidents birthday.

My Letter:

We had National Laos Day this last week! All of our english classes got cancelled and we went to eat food with the members and have some fun. They love playing card games. We also did a major clean out of the house as well. We picked up our rug and shook it off a little, and there was a surprising amount of dust that came out of it, so we all got some drumming sticks at the house and started wacking our rug to death while one of us would hold it up in the air. I am not overreacting when I say, there was about 3 water bottles worth of dust that came out of the rug.  

No kidding, it has actually been getting chilly here in Vientiane Laos. Everyone around me are all wearing big winter jackets and everyone is talking about how they don't shower because nobody has heated water here, and it is too cold. We are at the point we don't turn on the AC at the house anymore though or it will be too cold in the house. A lot of the Lao people said the cold will last for exactly 20 days and then it will be hot again. Hopefully that is true because I want everyone to start showering again.

We celebrated Hmong New Year here in Laos! Laos has the largest population of Hmong people in the world, second to America. We got to go see some bull fights, there was a big ball throwing festival, and everyone was taking pictures of us. It was crazy haha. One of the members kept joking about starting our own stand where we cost people a dollar to take a picture with us. We would have gotten a lot of money. haha

Wow, it is December already! I remember being in Surin for last Christmas. I can't believe I have been a missionary for such a long time. It feels weird when I am able to look back in previous journal entries from exactly a year ago and I am doing missionary work in Thailand. It all just feels so surreal. Time is such a strange aspect of life. I feel so much nostalgia as I think back to old memories. They are times that we will never get back, but we will have forever. You can't change it.  Your memories are one of the few things you know you will have forever for sure.  Your memories are set in stone, but your future is a blank book. Look back to the past with thankfulness and look forward to the future with hope. This has been deep thoughts with Boston. Have a good week.

-Elder Barron

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