Obejct pronoun choice - le, lo, la

Hola a todos!  Like many, I imagine, I still find direct and indirect pronoun use a bit challenging, particularly with 3rd person singular where there are several choices: le, lo, la.  As I understand it, le and lo are masculine, and la is feminine, correct?  Or is lo neutral gender?  I don't really understand how one chooses between le and lo.  In particular, I'm having a bit of trouble parsing this phrase from lesson 17.4:

Lo llevamos a la estación de buses, le vaciamos la billetera ...
(We) took him to the bus station, (we) emptied his wallet ...

Here, lo and le are both used, and it's unclear to me why.  Are lo and le here both referring to "him", and are direct object pronouns?  If so, why lo in one case, and le in the other?  Or is the le in "le vaciamos" referring to the wallet instead?  Is it an indirect object?  More generally, I'm wondering if there is typically a single correct choice according to rules of usage, or is it perhaps a bit more discretionary?  Muchas gracias por ayudarme!

 

¡Hola GaryM25!

Thank you for your question!

Indeed, direct and indirect object pronouns can be a bit of a challenge when you're learning Spanish! We have three lessons on the topic in our Level 1 course:

- Direct object pronouns
- Indirect object pronouns
- Putting direct and indirect object pronouns together

These lessons should explain everything in your questions above. If anything is still unclear, though, or if you have any problems with the links above, don't hesitate to come back and ask!

Saludos,

Liss

OK thanks Liss, I'll review those lessons.