Hope you enjoy the pictures I promised of some of the terrain here in Fredericksburg. These were taken from I-95. Sorry about the little imperfections like the barricade on the bridge and part of the car showing. Obviously, I couldn't work really hard on the composition of the pictures since we were driving on the freeway. I thought they turned out pretty well, though, considering the circumstances. I'll take a few more pictures the next couple of weeks so you can see the fall colors once they've all come out. Our mission here just keeps getting more and more interesting. Last week we were trying to get a member ride to take us with our investigator to a baptism in another stake and we couldn't find anyone so we called some members in our roommates' ward who served their missions speaking spanish. They happily helped us out and when we met in the church parking lot our branch president just happened to be there as well. He met them and then was asking us about them later that night. He gave us the assignment of recruiting them to the branch to help strengthen it:) Apparently, the stake president has encouraged any members of the stake who can speak spanish to join the branch so that we can start building it up more, but it's been pretty difficult for the branch president to get people to want to. Anyway, last night we invited the couple to come to the halloween activity and also to come to church with us the next day. They were pretty excited about it and it wasn't hard at all to convince them. Needless to say, our roommates weren't very happy that we were "stealing their members" but they ended up "giving us permission" in the end:) We're excited to be getting more strong members to help lift everyone else. So don't worry, we can now put "recruiting experience" on my resume when I get home. I learned how to make Mexican tamales yesterday. I am also working on perfecting my green salsa skills. You should all be super excited for the food we're going to eat in a few months. There's this Peruvian/Bolivian salad that's so good! It's called purple salad. It has beets, carrots, peas and mayonnaise. I wasn't so sure about the beets before, but I think it's my favorite salad now. I also made my first tres leches cake yesterday. It turned out way good. Sheesh! It's no wonder missionaries gain so much weight in the mission with all this good hispanic food! Well, I hope everyone enjoys Halloween this year. We are going to go to a zone activity that night because they don't let us go out and work. It's too dangerous. Usually, they would let us watch some Disney movie or something, but since it's on a Sunday we are going to do something different. I guess the movie will have to wait for New Year's Eve... Love you all!Hermana Larsen

Just wanted to show you some pictures to prove that 9 months living in the city didn't take any of the country out of me. This is me doing service for a member in the english ward. We were helping her dye her show horse. It's name is Elsie, but the show name is "Long Time to Come". The other horse is her trainers horse and his name is Michael. Show name, "Heaven's Silver Lining". He does tricks like give hugs and kisses and he also drinks coca-cola out of a can. Pretty fun, huh? Before you think that I've gone apostate, this is NOT coffee. It's made out of barley and it's the stuff we suggest for people to get as a coffee replacement when they are trying to quit. This was my first time trying it. It's actually pretty tasty. I'm not really sure how well it goes along with the "avoid all appearance of evil" thing, but it was fun to have as a snack at home:) I hope everyone enjoyed conference and that we all got lots of counsel that we can use. I know I did for sure. All of the talks were AMAZING.

I love you all,
Hermana Larsen