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HOLA FAMILIA!! it was great to get your letters and hear that all is well. im glad mom that you tried to teach Lars how he needs to say no to girls in a nice way but Lars is so smart that he is already practicing for the mission and yells them away. sounds like your winter is still going strong here they tell me that its going to start to rain soon which makes things a little bit cooler but also our whole area will be complete MUD so that will be interesting as well. As for jose and Yulema we are working hard for this weekend, yulema is still going strong and is just waiting patiently for her husband to grow up. He had some doubts about the BoM as well so we cleared that up and we are praying that we have been able to open his heart so that the Holy Ghost can strentghen his weak testimony. We are ending all the lessons kneeled in prayer and we arent sure what is keeping him from his testimony that he says he wants, but we trust that the Lord willdo his will and that he will help us to accept it. We´ll just keep trying to do what exactly what the spirit tells us to do because we cant get too far off track that way. also this weekend tatianna is preparing for
baptism as well as another youth. I think i mentioned tatianna in the last e-mail but she is our golden
investigator who got a testimony the same day that we taught her lesson one and is reading the BoM a chapter a day.
well she is still doing great and she loves what she is reading and is really excited for her baptism. she really understands that it is something that will take her closer to her Heavenly Father and that is will erase some things that she wishes she wouldnt have done. another good thing about Tatianna is that she got and RECOGNIZED her answer in the correct way through an overwhelming celestial feeling, the way it should be. a large number of the Costeños have an amazing talent of thinking that the only way they are going to get an answer through a dream or a vision. now im not saying visions or dreams and that kind of stuff are bad all you visionary dreamers who are reading this but here is an example of a typical dream answers. ex 1) the person is watering the dirt outside of his house (a typical costeño habit) and a man selling fruit comes by and the person calls him over to buy his fruit, when the person asks what he has the vendor says i carry mango, piña,coconut and jose smith fruit. Well our surprised dreamer asks in wonder ¨what is jospeh smith fruit¨ and the drean vendor sells him a mormon bible (the BoM). The dreamer then makes juice and its good. maybe that wouldnt be such a bad dream except that the invest. procedes to come to a bunch of WRONG conclusions from his dream that 1) we dont use the bible 2) jose smtih wrote the book of mormon 3) that we sell the BoM 4) that are our real names are jose and victor. Also when the invest does get an answer from the Holy Ghost he ignores it because his dream was way cooler. That was just one example of great dream answers when i get back i can tell you a bunch more, and belive me they are great.all in all im still way to happy, and healthy and blessed.pray hard for Jose that he recognizes the answers the Lord is sending him and that he opens his hear to the truth.
Love you all,
Elder Larson

p.s. the latest scripture i have memorized is jacob 5: 71 its UN PODER!!

I saw monkies this week!! (Feb 22)

but more importantly our investigadores are progresando. This weekend we have a young family programed to be baptized, Jose y Yulema Hernandez. As of a week ago Yulema didnt want to believe that the BoM could be true and we couldnt have that so we all got on our knees and asked God what he thinks about the Book of Mormon and He let us know. Since then Yulema has been progresando rapidamente and is getting real excited for baptism. Her husband Jose is doing OK but he is still getting over the fact that he is now married and cant hangout with his loser older brothers and play pool/ nintendo 64 all day. Its a rather typical costeño male problem, get married (well normaly he doesnt get married but thankfully jose did marry Yulema before they had a kid), has a kid, realizes its alot of responsibilty, gets scared, and hangs out at his moms house until his mother in law gets sick of her daughter whining and tells him to shape up or she wont let her daughter live with him anymore (the best part is when the mother in law tells him to shape up with a broom or a hose or something like that, the whole barrio comes out to see it). But we are going to watch ¨juntos por siempre¨with them, they react well to movies here, and pray alot. So pray for Jose and Yulema so they can get baptized TOGETHER this weekend. Other than them we have an investigador of GOLD who is doing golded. Her name is tatiana and she is a reference from her member boyfriend. WE taught her the restauracion about 2 weeks ago and after we invited her to read she got curious and read and prayed that night and got a big YES. since then she reads all the chapters we leave her 2 or 3 times and is also reading the BoM from the beginning a chapter a day. she is programed for the 6th of march so we are excited for the 6th of march, but pray for her too because alot of stuff can happen to an investigador in 2 weeks. As for me im really happy that im a DL again, not so much stuff to do and more preaching. I dont have to think so much about all the missionares in my zone and can focus on my distrito and my investigadores. oh also i have discoverd what was making our room smell strange at night latey i thought it was mice in the wall but...... its my compa!! he has a very peculiar smell at the end of the day and since i have discovered this i wont pray with him at night until he showers (i shower everynight just so you know, its complelty necesary). im sending you pictures of the central park here in monteria, thats where i saw the monkies and the iguanas, fun stuff.
Thanks for everything and i love you all
Elder Larson

p.s. the last photo is the latest of me, like i said earlier the sun here is extra crispy and i ran out of sunscreen about 3 days ago and this is what happened.

p.p.s. just kidding he is a mini misionero from Cartagena (he was in my ward)that is here because a misionero got sick hahaha fooled you all!

oh so there is snow there.... i have mangos (Feb 15)

so im glad the lord has seen fit to send the answer to all of my prayers as a highschooler a few years late, so enjoy the snow!! mom as an answer in what lars and layne could do inside1) have them memorize the first vision (preferibly in spanish) 2) send them back out to play in the snow for me bc there DEFINTALY is not snow here. ill stick my head in the fridge tomight to try to experiance it again. Im happy to see that everyone is enjoying themselves where there exists winter, here it doesnt exsist. Also i didnt even know that yesterday was valintines day but no big loss but im sure that matthew couldnt stop thinking about his frozen norweigen valintine jejeje. well this week has passed by really quick and why, because we were busy working our guts out, so fun! de verdad. when i got here my compa was teaching good and all but we started getting better and now were a restauracion teaching machine whippnig out LEc 1 in 30- 40 mins INCLUDING invinting the people to get baptized, and they best part is that they UNDERSTAND us as i will let you know when i get back the costeños are very simple and most of the time cant pay attention for more than 12 mins. the best part is that the Lord let us be succesful and we taught alot of people who we contacted and then taught right there and then invited them to get baptized. Also the Lord led us to people who just seemed like they were waiting to hear us. all in all our new investigator pool got a big ol boost because the lord let us invite 30 people to get baptized this week(they all accepted). here in the coast the people are really great and have alot of dead faith (dont want to do much with what they believe) so they are very willing to say they want to get baptized in the true church but little by little we find out who really wants to shock their faith to life by repenting and changing so alot of the mission is find as many as you can so chances are that more will be willing to change it was great that the Lord gave us a goodly number to work with. This week we are going to be teaching alot of how to recognize and answer about the BoM and why we need to go to church so pray that the goodly costeños read and pray and and connect love for God with being to obeying his commandments.
well as you can tell im happy because we are working hard and it has been a good week, we are excited to keep chugging along and finding those who will recieve us. Thanks for all your love letters and prayers
LOVE
Elder Larson