Hello!!!!!!

well this week was super full of stuff!! I don’t know if that made sense, my portuguese is messing up my english, but you know what I mean.

well to start off, on tuesday i did a split with the assistants of the mission. it was a super good day. i stayed with elder lopes from sao paulo. he is a really good elder and i learned a lot from him and it was awesome because none of the appointments fell through. everything worked out. so we were able to work hard and he was able to see how my area is doing. then on wednesday we did another split with some elders in the zone. one of them was complaining about a few things so we went and tried to help them for the day to resolve a few of these things and now it seems like things are better.

then on saturday we did a service project. but it was a service project that required parts of my body that i haven’t used for a really long time. we went and helped carlos and ruthielle. really close to their actual house they are building their own so that in the future they won’t have to pay rent. and guess what we did...... we filled in their back yard with dirt. but do you want to know what the dirt was like? well let me tell you. every time i put the shovel down to get some dirt, guess what i would hit?......... yes rocks! ahhhh, it was hard. it reminded me of the good old times in the garden, but my arms and my back don’t have quite the endurance that they had back then. we would shovel dirt into a wheelbarrow and then off to the back yard which was pretty far away from the dirt pile. in about 20 minutes, i was tired!  ha-ha! its pretty funny how out of shape i am. so dad don’t get discouraged after the mission with me, i will get back into shape and help you out again. but we stayed there doing the project for about 2 hours. it was fun.

then sunday we had a great day. we had two baptisms! they were mirela and camila. both of them were member references. we met mirela through luana that was baptized a few months ago and camila through meire who has been a member for along time. these two girls are very special. they were so excited to be baptized. from the moment that we taught them the commandments they started to keep them. they are really good examples to me. we are still working with mirela´s sister mileina. she was supposed to be baptized too. but for some reason she didn’t go to church. i think she is having a hard time leaving the catholic church and this week we will be working with erika. she is camila´s friend and she actually lives with camila. she went to church for the first time yesterday, and loved it. and she kept saying to us; "next sunday will  be my baptism!" so she is very excited. we are also working with aleluia who is camila’s mom. but she is having a hard time accepting the word of wisdom, but it will work out. we are also teaching a young boy named rafael who has been going to church by himself for three weeks that will be baptized this sunday. and we were preparing victor for baptism this sunday but yesterday he was sick and couldn’t go to church so now his baptism will be in two weeks.

the Lord is truly blessing us. this area is really blessed. there are always so many people to teach. i am so grateful to serve here. i have almost been in this area for 6 months. crazy huh. time flies so fast. but i love it here. the people of the ward are awesome.

i know that is church is true. every time i study i can see that it is the only true church. it has all the truth. we have a living prophet and he holds the authority of God. i know that the book of Mormon is true. it has taught me so many things. i know that God loves us. we have the truth and we must help other know it as well.

i love you all!!!!!!!!!! keep going strong. God will strength you!!

Love Elder T. Larsen

p.s. patrick and lidiany are going to be talking in church this week. they are so nervous. it is going to be interesting to see them teach. i am excited, but nervous for them. pray that it will be a good experience for them.

p.s.s. this is pretty much president batt´s last week. its very sad. i will miss him dearly!!!