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We received a really sweet message from Roberta this week.  She has taken all of the missionary discussions and has committed herself to getting baptized this week.   Her taking the time to write and send pictures really meant a lot to us!  We are all so very excited for her to receive the gospel in her life!

Roberta and Anziano Larsen

Anziano Larsen

Planning for the Baptism

Hey! This week we has been having fun planning for the baptism, which should be on Saturday. Here they don't have a built in baptismal font so we are going to learn how to use the "blow up font" here. We are really excited and hoping that everything goes through as planned. Thanks for all the prayers. We have also been having fun doing finding and trying to use a survey that we made to find new investigators. It seems to be working pretty good. Who doesn't want to participate in a Mormon survey?! ha The members have been helpful here the past few weeks. They have put forth a good effort at befriending our investigators in church and encouraging them. I'm grateful for the members here and their strong testimonies of the gospel. For english course we have started showing mormon messages for the spiritual thought at the end of the lesson. It seems to be working pretty well. It always sparks a good conversation and lots of questions! Wow that's cool that Colton got a new job! You will have to let me know if he likes it. It's weird being toward the end of the mission because you feel like you don't have much to say.  Hey Dad! How are you? Sounds like you are just having a great time! Haha golfing and kicking it in the sun!  I'm glad to hear that you didn't pass out when you got hit in the head with a golf ball! The blessings of the gospel surround us! I'm sure that if you weren't a strong member in the church you would have passed out for sure! Is Cocoa alright! Poor thing. I miss that dog! I was thinking about your question about what I want to do when I get home. First off I want to show the family all the pictures from my mission and tell stories of the crazy stuff that has happened that I could tell, or forgot to tell through emails. Then I want to watch movies with the family and maybe go to a movie with the family. I think that would be fun. oh yeah and eat a ridiculous amount of cereal! haha. Other than that I'm fine with doing whatever. I can't believe we are only a little over three weeks a way! I can't wait to see you! Love you tons and thanks for writing! Oh yeah, weird question. Do you know when my homecoming talk will be? Because if it is the first Sunday I get back I'm going to have to start preparing it here. Just let me know please. Well thanks for everything! Love you all!! 4

The Spirit Truly Guided Us

So.. Our investigator Roberta is going to get baptized next Saturday! The 2nd of March. She is great she is about 26 and she is an architect, she is super nice and loves the church. Keep her in your prayers. This week we went to Catanzaro for an exchange. I was with Anziano Di Caro, an Italian who is in his first transfer. We went to an appointment to teach a guy the first lesson. He called us and asked us if we could meet him in his studio. We agreed and went on the search for his studio which was pretty hard to find, but after about an hour we found his studio. We went in and he told us to follow him up stairs. To our suprise there were two other men in the room sitting in front of computers smiling at us. One of them was the head preist over the area in Catanzaro and the other was a pastor of an evangilist church and the third was just a devouted member to the evangelist church, all three of them were great friends that thought it would be fun to invite the mormon elders over to try and confound us. They had their computers filled with researched material ready to destory us! They started bombarding us with questions both about the doctrines and history of the church. It was intense. Haha I don't think that they expected us to know the Bible better than they did. We concluded with a prayer and invited them to pray about it all and went on our way. Hopefully they will do so. I gained a testimony of D&C 71:10 "And if any man lift his voice against you he shall be confounded".. The spirit truly guided us. Then yesterday we found a new investigator! So its been a good week! Sounds like everyone is having fun at home. Grandma and Grandpa are too kind! I sure miss the whole family but am also loving the mission too much! Well I love you a ton and can't wait to see you again! Love you tons and thanks for always writing!! Email 5

The Church is True

Hey thanks for writing! This week has been another good one. We found some great contacts and one of our investigators decided she wants to get baptized! She just wants one of the members to come who is sick so she hasn't chosen the date yet. We invited her to pray to ask if she should get baptized and she did and the next day she told us she had a dream that I baptized her. Italians have the craziest dreams! So we are really excited! She is great. I also gave a 20 minute talk in church on Sunday about missionary work. It went pretty good I think. Other than that nothing really new. We had to take a 4 hour 30 minute drive to Bari today for the mission tour tomorrow! That wasn't very fun. I hope you are all doing good at home. The Church is true and it is slowly and steadly growing here in Italy. We are all excited for the Rome temple to be finished.Well better run. Sorry for the short email. Love you! P.S. Thanks for all the help with schooling! You are great!!

Thanks for all the Birthday Wishes



Anziano Green, Anziano Larsen and Roberta an investigator who made this cake for Caleb's 21st birthday



This week was great! Thanks for all the birthday wishes! I had a great day and a great week. My last transfer call came in and I will be staying here in Cosenza for my last transfer and unfortunatly my companion, Anziano Cremonesi, is getting transfered to Messina. But my next companion is going to be great. His name is Anziano Jones. I already know him. He is a really nice guy. He was in my district in Bari, and was companions with Anziano Green. This will be his 5th transfer in the mission. So I'm excited to finish the mission with him as my companion. Then Sunday was church and it was fast and testimony meeting and I got up to bear my testimony on prayer and how I received an answer to go on a mission through the testimony of someone else. I talked about how God always answers our prayers and how the mission has been the most incredible experience ever, and how God always responds to us in different ways we just need to search for an answer and recognize it. So I talked about Havier and how he talked about missionary work  and that was my answer. Right after I bore my testimony. Sorella Spizzieri, an incredible member of 3 years who lost her husband and son about 6 years ago, stood up and bore here testimony and said that she had been praying on whether she should serve a mission or not and that when I bore my testimony she received her answer to go! Good job Havier!! Ha it was really cool so she is going to start working on her papers. Then my birthday was super great. The members were all super nice and Gianna made me a suprise cake which was delicious and then our investigator, Roberta, made me a suprise cake and bought me a sweater! Too nice! Members kept calling me to wish me Happy Birthday. It was a really good day. Then this morning we woke up and a member called us to give her husband, who is not a member, a blessing because he is old and has a fever that has lasted 3 or 4 days and he wanted one. So we went there and he looked terrible. I was honestly scared that he was going to die on us. He couldn't breathe and was sweaty. They already took him to the doctor but they didn't do much for him so we gave him a blessing and said that he will heal and said some other stuff and we sealed the blessing and left the room. We go into the other room and start talking to his wife, the member, and like 15 seconds later he just walks right past us and sits down on the couch like nothing really happened. We all looked at each other like "What in the world!" Haha He isn't totally better but he looked pretty good by the time we left. That was super cool! Then after that we went to Sorella Spizzieri's house to make gniocchi. It was fun and really good. So the week here went really good. I hope you all are doing good at home even though it's cold. I miss you all a ton! Love you!!!  Hey Dad! Thanks for the Birthday wishes! Haha I will wreck you at running! I have two years of walking around legs. This week was awesome! So many things happened. You can read about it on the other email because I am to lazy to type it again. Our investigator Roberta is counting the days down for me. Every day she calls me and says, Anziano Larsen! You have 44 days left. It's the worst! Plus every night I have a dream about My home coming talk or going home or something, even though I am not thinking of home much. It's weird. All the missionaries call you the old missionary and keep reminding you how close you are to going home. Sounds like you are going to be quite busy with your job! Are you excited? Nervous at all? You'll do great! I miss football and Movies with the family. We will have to watch some sports and movies together when I get home. Oh yeah, Who won the superbowl this year? and Who was in it? Well thanks for writing I sure love you and miss you!! Ciao!!!