Life is great!

A bunch of missionaries on p-day in Thailand.

We went on a hike in Laos and saw this beautiful waterhole on the way up the mountain.

Inside a cave on our day off.

There was this cool Buddha statue in the cave.

We got the chance to help out this school with new bathrooms and a well.

We got a new missionary in Laos! 

He is the one on the right of me. That makes 5.

The kids at the school we went to.

These bracelets are part of a ceremony that they do to say thanks.

On the top of a mountain with an epic view.

Someone dragged this motorcycle up this huge mountain to provide photo opps for people. Haha! It was so funny.

It actually was pretty scary.

We ate these. 

Update:

Some highlights from this week:

- We have had 3 baptisms in our branch in the last month. Their names are Gong, Noy, and Poang. They are all 16-18 years old.

-We have a lot of certificate ceremonies for the students that passed the classes going on. We have to do assessments for the next classes, where we test them to see what classes they should be in next term. Then we have to have signing ceremonies for the new ministries we are teaching English at next term.

- We went to Buddha Park. This park had a ton of different statues. It was really fun because we got to go with some Lao members, and all of the statues had a different story that they told us about. 

- I traveled back to Thailand like 3 times in the last month. We were supposed to meet Elder Andersen (One of the 12 Apostles) in our zone, but when he was visiting the other half of the mission, his wife injured her back, so they didn't end up coming to visit us. We just had a small zone conference instead. We also went to Thailand to do interviews with President Hammond, and for the last time, we got a plane down to Bangkok for Elder Flakes visa work. 

- Interesting fact about Buddhism. Funerals. At the funeral of someone who dies, you all sit around the casket while a monk says a chant kind of song. Then everyone puts a lower on the casket. After that, they light the casket which has little popper things and fireworks on it. The fire gets pretty dang massive, and there are a few little explosions while it burns. Then the relatives start throwing candy all over the place while the guests try to catch it. Once the casket burns away you can see parts of the dead body inside burning. They also have a second funeral 100 days after the death of that person. I'm not sure what the importance is of the second funeral, but there is no fire in the second one. 

- Here's a little story. My bike broke lately. I was just riding it and then the pedaling stopped working. It pedals, but that doesn't turn the wheels. Apparently, the piece that broke is a really expensive and rare piece for the bike. I went to two different shops and they both said I had to go to Thailand to buy the piece, so I went there and it turns out (bike pun) I could buy just that piece, but I had to buy the whole hub that spins tires and connects spokes. It costed 1500 baht (50 dollars). That was really expensive. I wanted to make sure that I didn't go back to Laos without the piece and then not have a bike, so I just bought it. Then I went back to Laos and went to 5 different bike shops and none of them had the piece to fix it. I asked around a lot and our apartment manager said he knew a good place, so we followed him over there and there was a small old man who said, "yeah, I can fix it." He didn't need a new piece or anything, he just fixed it for 50,000 kip (5-6 dollars). Now I'm just gonna return that expensive piece and I'll get my money back when I get the chance to go the Thailand again.This was a fun month. Next Monday, we are starting to teach English again, so I am very excited for that. 

Have a good week. Love,

-Elder Barron 

I turned 20!

 Some cool dragons down by the river.

 Great kids at church.

 Celebrating the Chinese New Year with a member who is Chinese.

 Celebrating my birthday. I'm 20!

 Visiting Buddha Park in Vientiane.

 Lao school kids.

I'm inside the yellow and green dragon.

Some interesting things that have happened since my last email:

- I have now finished my blackout year of my mission (that is the year that I have to spend the entire year out in the field from January 1st to January 1st)

- We started growing plants in our apartment. We planted some lime seeds, sesame seeds, and mango seeds. The mango seed and lime seeds still haven't germinated. But the sesame seeds are coming up. 

- There are a few members we are trying to help to go on missions. 2 people we are helping to do their mission papers, and 2 who already have their call and are preparing to go. One member named Namwan just left yesterday. She is serving in California.

- For primary, their song books are bad quality. We have been making poster boards with the lyrics on it, so they could all see it and sing together. In branch 2, they love having the primary children sing in sacrament meeting. They have the children sing a song once every meeting. They are so cute. 

- I turned 20 years old! No more a teenager. 

- I met a man who was 102 year old. He was a real trooper. Her was walking around and carrying stuff. I had to yell pretty loud in order for him to hear. Then he grabbed a fishing net and said, "I'm going down to the river to go fishing." It was pretty crazy how strong he still was.

- At a members house, they have a ton of ducks and chickens running around. I noticed one that had a piece of plastic wrapped around its leg. I asked why, and the owner said," I've been trying to catch if for a long time now, but I can't." I asked if I could try to catch it and he said yes, so I ran around for about a minute and caught it. Their whole family was watching me and laughing their heads off at me, but I caught it and got the plastic off. It was so fun.

Love you all, have a great week!

Elder Boston Barron

Merry Christmas!!!

We were visiting a member and I stole a tiara from her little girl and she got mad at me.

We went out visiting members and brought this sister with us to find their houses.

You can see the little girl whose tiara I stole sitting on her mom's lap in this picture. She's pretty cute. 

We sang, "Love At Home" with their family.

This family we are with has a son named Tiger currently serving his mission in Texas. I got to be here in Laos for the send off. They are an awesome family!

This is a woman who is deaf. She taught us Laos sign language, it was way fun.

Our students were all so happy because they all passed english class this semester. This was a small class of 6.

We had a pizza party to celebrate.

We all got together to decorate for the big Christmas party.

We got to teach the primary children for church on Sunday. We kept the kids attention. It was fun.

This sister made us all ties for Christmas! 

Way nice!

Chandler and I are new companions. Great guy!

More class parties.

We got the chance to ride elephants!

Headed out to plant rice on Christmas day.

There was a wedding in the branch that we went to. It was neat to see.

A teeny weenie banana.

Cool sunset over Laos.

Laotian nativity.

My Letter:

So going into winter, I heard from a lot of Lao people the cold season lasts only 10 days here in Lao. I thought that was kind of funny because I didn't think it was going to get cold at all and I thought their point of view on "cold" is a little different because of what they are so used to here. It actually blew my mind how one day was as hot as ever, and the very next day, I actually wished I had a jacket for the first time in one and a half years. It got down to about 50-60 degrees. That was the most amazing weather ever. I was so grateful for the cold. But just as fast as it started being cold, in 10 short days, it was back to the normal 90 degrees. I couldn't believe how actually accurate their prediction of the weather was. It was cold for exactly 10 days and then winter was over. Weird. 

We have got a few bad sicknesses going through our house here. First, Chandler and Isaac got it, then Noah, and last of all me...  I can feel the bug starting to ease off though. 

We completely finished all of our English classes in this last week. We had to make 4 different finals, give the tests to all of the 4 classes, grade 4 classes worth of tests, and give all the tests back. It was a lot of work to grade all of the tests, but we got it all done in time. Every once in a while, there are some funny answers the students will give us. One specific one I remember was when we asked one of our beginner classrooms to write the five vowels (A,E,I,O,U) and they actually wrote U,R,I,N,E. I would be pretty surprised if they even know what that word means, but if they did know they still got three out of five points, so that was a pretty good word to chose to write.

At the end of one of our english classes, the cleaning lady walked in to start cleaning while we stayed later to grade tests. We tried to say hi to her and soon figured out she was deaf. For about 30 minutes we just sat there writing on the board in Lao and learning some Lao sign language from her. It was really fun. She taught us how to say all the numbers from 1 to 999, teacher teach student, sister, brother, age, height, and meet again. It was fun. That place we teach at is a hospital for helping people who are disabled. They employ a lot of disabled people and since then, I have met two other people who are deaf and I can have a small conversation with them. It is fun seeing their face when they see we can speak a little Lao sign language. (Lao Sign Language and American Sign Language are different.)

Our fridge was smelling so dang bad for the last few days and we couldn't find the source of the smell, so I took everything out of our fridge and wiped it down, but it still smelled horrible. We decided to just take the whole fridge out of the wall, and we found out there is a little water catcher that goes to the back of the fridge, and apparently some of my melted chicken juices went back there and stink, STANK, STUNK!!!!

We had a really cool Christmas party with the two branches. My favorite part was the live nativity given by the primary children. It was so cute.

I officially got moved to a different branch. I'm going to be in Branch 2 for a while now. That branch's area is all of Laos outside the city of Vientiane. I'm really excited because there is a lot of little kids in Branch 2. There are also a lot of investigators learning right now. Next week we should have a baptism for someone named Gong who is about 16 years old. 

On Christmas Day, we got to go 2 hours up north to the rice field of one of the members and we helped him plant rice. It was a lot of bending over and my back was on fire, but it was so fun. It was definitely the best Christmas present I could have asked for. Except for maybe a nephew from Quincey, but that didn't happen, so this was the next best thing.

Life is good here in Laos. I feel so at peace and happy nowadays. I hope everyone else is having a good time. Thank you for all of the emails that I receive! They are appreciated a lot!

-Elder Barron