Snow in Utah

Here are 2 pictures from when Cooper was in the Missionary Training Center in Utah. It snowed all through the spring! Now it's winter in Argentina, so he should be getting his coat out again!

His email last week had the subject line "Hace frio aqui!" which means "It's cold here!" He was sweating through the heat and humidity in Baltimore, so his poor body probably doesn't know what season it is now!

Coop's 2nd letter in Argentina!

6/23/08

Yay! Here is Cooper's 2nd letter from Argentina:

Hola!,

So I´ve been in Paraná for a week now, and it´s been a great week! I´ll start by telling you a little about the country. There´s still a lot of problems. When I met the bishop earlier this week (our bishop is crazy by the way, it´s really funny) his wife told me "Bienvenidos al Infierno". (Welcome to hell.)

I know they had a country-wide strike on Wednesday, meaning they blocked all the highways I guess, and wouldn´t let food through. The whole food strike doesn´t really affect us honestly, we can still get pretty much everything they´re trying to stop from getting through. I don´t know I guess there´s just not enough farmers to stop everything.

Also a couple days ago we couldn´t get any water and we found out that some people who were angry at the government broke some water pipes and did something so the whole city couldn´t get water. It was ok though they must have fixed it pretty quickly because we had water again by that night. YEAH!! Oh and did I tell you how the water here works? Everyone has a water tank on top of their house and when it runs out you go outside and turn a little knob so that fills it up again. Then when you hear water pouring all over the roof you go and run back outside and turn it off.

So yeah that´s a little bit about what´s going on, in other news I found a cucaracha on my cama yesterday morning haha. (cockroach on my bed) Ok that´s enough about the country, now on to the missionary work. I´m finally working in the field where I´m supposed to be and it´s great and we´re really trying to work hard.

And my goodness I feel like I´ve learned so much since I´ve been here. Especially about the Atonement. We listened to an old talk about the Atonement that one Elder had on a cd, and I feel like it totally changed the way I see the Atonement and I finally understand why it had to be. And all the work that we´ve been doing has taught me a lot too.

We´re whitewashing this area, which means we totally replaced the missionaries here before us, and they left us with nothing. This last week we taught over 90 lessons. (A lesson meaning teaching any principle and leaving a commitment). And finally one old couple let us into their house. I just don´t understand how people don´t want anything to do with something so wonderful that we are so willing to give. And I know it´s just a taste of what the Savior feels. It can get you down when someone rejects the gospel after you share it with them but then once you start talking to someone else you feel great again.

Oh I´ve also got some good news for RJ, if he reads this. Great news, the Wisconsin waterfall is alive and flowing through Argentina. The mullet is IN here! YEAH!! haha, I´ve got funny news for Bryce too. All the little Argentine kids are way into Dragonball Z here. They play this little card game that´s way funny to watch.

It´s really funny to see all the things that come here from America. We actually just ate at a McDonalds. Which was dumb cuz it´s really expensive and the same as in the states, but the other Elders wanted to go so we went. And McDonalds here is SO funny. It´s like the 5 star restaurant of the city. If you´ve got a hot date or a business deal to close then it´s the place to be. And I´m not joking.

Also about the mail. I haven´t gotten any DearElders or anything. The only time we get mail is when we have a zone conference or something, cuz they bring it to us from the mission home, so about twice a month we get mail.

And also, Mom it´s your birthday in about 6 days, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! You´ll be getting a letter but it could be a while, like 2 weeks. haha sorry. I told Lauren I would send her a letter as soon as I could once I got here, but I wasn´t able to send anything until today. I´m sorry Lauren! We don´t have a mail place in our area so I had to wait until today. But I think I´ve got the mail figured out now so hopefully I don´t get delayed in sending stuff anymore.

Ok well that´s about all for now. I´m gonna go try and get all the pictures on my camera copied onto a cd right now so that I can send it home. Oh and I wanted to ask, Did you ever get that box full of letters and pictures that I sent from the MTC?Ok, talk to you again next week! Sounds like things are going well at home, that stinks about the house though. Hopefully moving isn´t as much of a pain as it was last time. Love you all,
Love,

Elder Boice

Using his spare time wisely

Here is another picture Cooper took while in the MTC. I don't know if Cooper created this magnificent work of art in his spare time or if some other missionaries made it for him. Either way, I think the expression on Coop's face is kinda funny. Good to see those missionaries using their time wisely. (wink)

Don't Do Anything Stupid!

I don't know if you can see this picture very well, but I think it's really cute. I love the expression on Cooper's face as he points to the sign with a quote by President Gordon B. Hinkley that says "Don't Do Anything Stupid!" ha ha

Cooper's new email address in Argentina is:

boice.c.t@myldsmail.net

You can also write to him via www.dearelder.com using the "Argentina, Rosario" mission dropdown on the menu choice. He'd love to hear from you!

Ab Crunch Machine

I haven't heard the story about these pictures yet. Coop just mentioned that there was a missionary going to Spain on his mission where I went. (Love the T-shirt!) Looks like Cooper took advantage of this missionary's assets to work on his ab crunches. Ouch!

Missionary P-day attire

Here's another picture of Coop back when he was in the MTC. It must have been on the same day when he was parting his hair in the middle to look like a nerd. ha ha

Here's the letter he emailed today (June 30, 2008):

Hola!
Yep I´m still alive and holding on over here. Haha. Thanks so much for the email mom! And for the Pictures! I loved them. I had to mess around with the computer a little bit but I figured out how to see the pictures. So thank you!

Oh man, so Michael´s going to Phoenix?! And Mahonri to India?! That´s so cool! And yeah you´re right that´s where Alan just got back from. It was super funny to hear his Indian accent when he got back. Tell them congrats for me when you see them!

Oh and no I haven´t received any DearElder letters yet. They only give us our mail during Zone Conference and transfers. So apparently we only get mail about every 4-6 weeks. Kind of a bummer. But I just started mailing letters a week ago, and I think it takes 2 weeks for my letters to get to the states, you´ll have to let me know. So they should get there about a week from now! I hope so at least. Oh and what´s this with keeping the letters short so that I have more time to write? I need to know what´s going on over there too!

Ok I´ll tell you a little about my week here now. Nothing too exciting happened though I don´t think. We´ve just been working a lot trying to find people. And it´s a lot harder to find people than I thought it would be...Although it´s kind of funny to see all the different things people do to hide when we come knock on their door (We usually clap actually).

It´s rare when people actually open the door, usually a lady will open a window and just tell us she´s busy, or a kid will come and say that their parents aren´t there. So then we ask the kid to go ask his mom when she´ll be back (cuz we know she´s there) and he goes and asks her and then tells us. Also it´s funny when we see people looking through the key hole or trying to sneak a peak through a curtain to see who it is at the door. That´s what usually happens. My trainer says a lot of the Argentines are like teenagers who haven´t quite grown up yet. haha I dont know he may be right.

So yep, we´ve just pretty much been looking for people. We taught over 100 lessons this week, all at the door, we never got in a house. And we were able to give ONE Libro de Mormon (Book of Mormon) finally!! Besides that, we´ve been sworn at a lot and had rocks thrown at us a few times and two sets of Elders were robbed this week. Don´t worry not me. One was our zone leaders who got mugged, but the other set of Elders I´m not sure where they are but they came home at night and their door was laying on the ground and EVERYTHING was gone... Even their pillows and the food in the fridge! How much does that stink?!!

It seems like a lot of the Argentines are sick right now too, con el gripe (with the flu). And one of the Elders in our pinch (apartment) got sick a couple days ago.

Oh here´s a good story, kind of. We were walking around the other night not sure what to do because we didn´t have any appointments and people start to get mad when you knock and it´s too late... So we were walking around and I saw this lady trying to get our attention on the other side of the street. We´re not allowed to contact the women here (the Argentine guys get angry when we talk to them), but we walked back over to her, cuz I heard her call out Elder! And when we got to her she just started crying. Apparently she had been a member for 12 years, but she was smoking and obviously wasn´t active any more. But she wanted us to go over to her house and teach her, so we did. (which was ok cuz her uncle was there). So we went to her house, which was weird cuz there were no lights, only a couple candles cuz they couldn´t afford the electricity. And when we were there some guy came by who wanted to buy drugs. But she yelled at him and said No! We´re hearing the word of God right now! Then the lady told us she was on her way to go buy cocaine when she saw us and it changed her mind. So we shared a little lesson on the Atonement and she said we were angels. She was a little crazy though and it wasn´t too hard to tell why. So I hope it helped her a little bit. You just have to remember there´s no accidents in this work.

Well that´s about it for this week. My comp (companion) just told me that next week is transfers so I won´t be writing again until next Tuesday. Oh and there´s one more thing I wanted to know. Could you find out and let me know if Lauren is still going to go to China? She should have found out by now and it´s killing me cuz I really want to know! If you could find out and let me know in your next email I´d really appreciate it! That´s all for this week. Let me know how everythings going at home and how everyones doing. I love you all!
Love,
Elder Boice

Coop's MTC district

Here are a few pictures of Cooper with his MTC district. All of them are scattered around Argentina now!

Coop's first letter from Argentina 6/14/08

Cooper is so excited to be in Argentina now that he's floating in air!
Here's his first letter since arriving on June 14, 2008:

Hola familia!,
Estoy aquí en Argentina y acabo de lluegar en Paraná. I hope this doesn't go to your junk mail because they gave me a new email address to use from now on. And the old one is going to be deleted soon.

Sooo, yeah I´m in Argentina now! And I got here safely and everything is going well. On Friday I left Baltimore and I landed in Buenos Aires about 8 am the next morning. And PS it was great to be able to call home! It sure makes you appreciate it.

So we spent about 2 days in the mission home in Rosario, which is really nice actually. Apparently it´s like the nicest house that I´ll ever see here. Staying at the mission home was a lot like ¨staying at Grandma´s house¨. When we got there we had some pizza (Argentine style) and played volleyball in the backyard for a few minutes. Then we slept out back in the bunk house. We didn´t do all that much, mostly just learned about what to do here, and it´s a good thing I´m out of there now because I would have gotten fat if I was in there much longer. The Hermana ( the mission president´s wife) is a really good cook and she fed us a lot. I did love the mission president though, and it´s sad that I probably won´t get to see him again. (Editor's note: a new mission president will be arriving in July.)

So just this morning I took a bus up to Paraná. It´s a cool little city, and I met my trainer. He´s from California also. I just went and put my stuff in our pinch (apartment). And guess what, it´s awesome! haha it makes the one in Baltimore look way nice. None of the pinches here have carpets. I´ll have to take some pictures, I wasn´t really sure what to expect. Wow there´s so much that´s different here. I guess I´ll just start listing things that come to mind.

Let´s see, the sewer system is usually above ground, just a ditch next to the sidewalk. The shower is a little tank of water that you fill up and you plug it in to make the water hot. Showers aren´t so great here. The villas (pronounced Veeshas here) are pretty crazy, you don´t see anything like that in the states for sure. The villas are pretty much the poorest of the poor, although some are nicer than others. There´s lots of dogs that roam around.

The hermana (Mission Presiden'ts wife) took in a villa dog about a year ago, pretty funny, it´s the mission pet I guess. Oh and people keep dogs on their roofs. Because of the dogs, people don´t have trash cans. You hang it on a tree or put it on a little stand thing out front. But the trash dissapears within a few minutes anyway. Pretty much anything will be gone within about 20 mins because the people who live in the villas will come and get it.

There´s trash everywhere, because they empty it out and take what they want, and then just leave it or burn it. Theres always people burning trash. Oh and the food strike deal is still going on. We saw it when we were going down the highways. The farmers will set up somewhere on the highway with their tractors and stuff and they don´t let food go by. They don´t let fruits, vegetables, milk, meat, or gas through. So everythings pretty messed up.

And gas stations are ridiculous. When we were driving down here we saw a huge line of trucks filled with gas on the side of the highway. You can only get about 20 pesos of gas from the station, and we´ve seen a few that are out of gas. I guess I´ll just have to see how this whole strike turns out.

The language is cool and it takes getting used to. Way different than Mexican spanish for sure. But fun to listen to. Oh so on Sunday we went out contacting for just a little bit. We went to Rosario city and they were having a big celebration for some communist guy that was born in Argentina. (Che or something). I can´t remember his name right now. But there were some Cuban bands playing music and stuff and so we set up and started talking to people. Probably not the best time to contact but it was fun. One Elder who was in my MTC group totally reminded me of the guy in the movie "The Best Two Years". He wears glasses and can barely speak in spanish, and the first person he started talking to happened to be English. Pretty funny. It was cool though because he had accidentally grabbed an English folleto (pamphlet) and says he swore he picked up a spanish one before he started talking to her. There´s no accidents in this work.

Oh and I just remembered I need to give you the mission home address. That's where you mail everything to me. The hermana actually said she emailed something to you about mail so I´m hoping the address is in there. It talks about sending packages and everything too. If not let me know and I´ll get the address for you. And could you forward the address to Lauren? If you haven´t already? Thank You!

Ok well, I should get going. I need to go figure out how to mail stuff home! Oh and today is my P Day. We have P day on Mondays I guess. But who knows what it will be 3 weeks from now when we get our new Mission President. Well, I love you all. Let me know what´s going on at home! Talk to you again in a week. And I hope everything is going well.
Love,
Elder Boice

Cooper arrived in Argentina!

Yay! Coop is in Argentina now! His mission president's wife just emailed us these pictures with the following note:

Dear Parents,

Here is a picture of your son and his group with the President and I. Sorry we could not send one of your missionary and his trainer but because of transportation we were unable to bring all of the trainers in to the mission home. Enjoy the picture.

Love,

Hermana Hutchison

(Editor's note: In the group picture I recognize Cooper's companion from the MTC. He's the missionary standing to the left of Cooper. Cooper is the 2nd missionary from the right. The picture is pretty small so you might not be able to see very well.)

Elder Nerdly

I've never quite seen Cooper like this before! These pictures are from when he was in the MTC goofing around to look like a real nerd. I guess all of that studying must have really gotten to him!

He called us yesterday from the Baltimore, Maryland airport on his way to Argentina! He should have arrived early this morning with a big, goofy grin on his face! He loved Baltimore and had some really great experiences there. One special experience is when he was teaching a particular man and his wife. He said he had the strangest feeling of deja vu like he had been there teaching them before. Then he remembered he had a dream of that exact moment after he had received his mission call. He felt strongly that he was supposed to be in Baltimore for that very reason.

We're so excited to hear about his next adventures! You can all write to him using DearElder.com again for free. This time click on the drop-down menu that says "Argentina, Rosario Mission." Thank you for supporting our wonderful, studly, and nerdly missionary!

Backflippen Boice

Cooper says he finally learned how to do a back flip! Cool! He sent pictures to prove it!

Here's his letter from today. I've tried to fix the spacing half a dozen times but it still smooshes all together....sorry!

(6/11/08):

Hola family,

That's so awesome that Elder Hoynacki, haha I guess it's David now, is back home. I wish I could have been there to see that. I'm definitely gonna have to come and visit our ward in Carlsbad when I get home if we don't live there anymore. And yeah that was pretty messed up that Elder Squires' camera got stolen in the MTC. That's neat that his mom got in contact with you. Thanks for sending her those pictures.

I actually was hoping to go down to Argentina with him but they changed things around a little. :(He's actually probably beginning his journey as I'm typing! Yep, so hopefully I'll be able to start emailing pictures home once I get to Argentina. I'll figure out a way.

Oh and I took a few of our apartment, but it's actually looking better now. Some people came and fixed all the holes in the walls and in the shower. I should have taken pictures of it earlier before it got fixed haha. It's really not that bad, I'm not complaining.

So I'll tell you a little about my week and then I'll tell you when I leave for Argentina! Earlier this week I went on an exchange with another missionary but he came to my area so I had to figure out what to do. I don't know too much since it had only been about 2 weeks, and our appointments fell through, so we did a lot of knocking! And it was a great day. We were able to give 6 Books of Mormon (5 english, 1 spanish), and get 6 return appointments. I don't know what's normal for a day in Argentina, haha but I felt pretty good about it cuz we passed all our goals.

On Saturday we went to a wedding. There's a couple that the english Elders are teaching that is getting baptized, but they were living together so they needed to be married first. So it was just them, us 4 missionaries, and the bishop, and they got married in the bishop's office. We all really like this couple, they're a lot of fun. The wife quit her job so she could go to church on Sundays, and they couldn't afford rings so we got them something special as a suprise. We went and got her a ring, and we couldn't find one that fit the husband, he's pretty big, so we got him a watch. hehe, So now they're married, and they're getting baptized this Sunday, but I won't be there .

(Let's see, another thing we did was we went to the hospital and gave a blessing to a man's wife, who is pretty far into Cancer. That was a cool experience, and I really feel like this man is one of the reasons I was sent to this area. In other news, fireflies are out! YAY! So is that humidity. Yuk.

Ok so now I'll tell you about when I leave. I found out on Sunday that I would be leaving on Wednesday, but since then they've changed it so now I'm leaving this Friday. And I'm kind of bummed cuz I thought I would be able to ride down with Elder Squires and swap our couple weeks worth of missionary stories. Oh well. I guess I'll be able to concentrate on talking to the other people sitting around me now.

So basically all I know is...I'm leaving Friday, June 13th. I don't know what time. All I know is I head to the airport at about 11:00am. And I'll probably have a layover in Texas. But I'm not sure. So, I don't really know what time I'll be able to call. Sorry I can't give you any better details. But expect a call sometime Friday, probably in the afternoon?. As far as I know I shouldn't have anymore changes in when I leave. Ok, gotta go. Hopefully I'll talk to you in a couple days!

Love,

Elder Boice

Cooper the Jedi Missionary

No, these pictures aren't upside down....Cooper just really flips over missionary work! ha ha

If you write him a lot of letters then maybe I'll tell you how he did this trick in the MTC. He sent us a package with a bunch of fun pictures, so I'll be posting them until he's able to send us some new pictures from Argentina!

2nd P-day in Maryland 6/4/08

I received a box in the mail with some pictures that Cooper mailed from the MTC before he left. Above are a couple of pictures from his MTC days. I'll attach more to another blog entry soon!

Below is an email we received from Cooper this week:

Hi family!,

Yep today is my 2nd P-Day here. We actually went up to Baltimore and walked around and stuff. It's weird getting used to humidity again. It was so HOT! When we got home I felt like I just ran 5 miles cuz I was so wet.

I'll have to send home my memory card eventually so you can get all the pictures and things on it. Ok so I'm gonna give you a new address. This is the address to the mission home, and it's probably safer if you mail things there from now on while I'm here, cuz they will make sure it gets to me if it comes after I've left. The other address has been ok though I've already gotten a couple things in the mail already :) Ok so here's the mission home address. You might actually be able to find it online too actually....
4785 Dorsey Hall Dr.

Suite 105

Ellicott City, MD 21042

Ok so now I'll tell you a little about my last week. It was good and as always I'm learning what a mission is like. It'll be interesting to see what it's like in Argentina compared to here.So I went on exchanges earlier this week which was cool. I went into a different area and had a crazy companion for the day haha. It was pretty fun, we were in kind of a ghetto area but still somehow our apartment here is even more ghetto hehe.

We had zone conference last Friday, and I didn't know zone conference was so long! It was almost 7 hours. It was really good though. On Saturday we had a funeral at the church building. Which suprisingly might have been the highlight of the week. There was a spanish sister who was killed in a car accident. There's hardly any spanish members in our area, in fact my companion and I just translate sacrament meeting and give them headsets to listen to during sacrament. But we had the funeral in spanish, and the entire room was FILLED. With nonmembers ;) There was a talk given on the Plan of Salvation and actually the missionary who baptised this woman came back for the funeral, he's been off his mission for a couple years. He gave a talk and talked about her conversion which was very powerful.

Afterwards my companion and I talked to a lot of people and found a lot who wanted to be taught. We probably passed out around 100 pass-along cards as well.That was a great experience, and I hope a lot of good will come from it. The bishop said it was the happiest Latino funeral he had ever seen. Apparently theres usually all kinds of weeping and wailing and such but there wasn't at all.Yesterday was kind of dissapointing.

One of the people I had told you about last week, who we had given a Book of Mormon and taught him and who was really excited about it... Well we talked to him yesterday on the phone and he said he doesn't want to join our church anymore because he doesn't want problems with his family. They won't let him go to our church apparently. Sad, but at least the seed's been planted. But we did teach another lesson yesterday to two women from the funeral, and asked them if they would be baptized, and they said yes, after they read and pray and get an answer of course. We also gave a blessing in spanish which was cool.

Also more stuff is going on with the less active guy I told you about, who I gave a blessing to the second day I was here. I'll spare you all the details for now, just more stuff with the spirits in his house. We're going over there later tonight actually, so I'll let you know how the story plays out.

Also, Mom, you asked me if I'm keeping a journal here or just using the letters I write as a kind of a journal. Don't worry I have a journal that I've been writing in. Not every day, but pretty often. But it's impossible to say everything in it, or in my letters. My journal is mostly the more personal stuff I guess. Once I get home maybe I'll let you read it and read about how I've been shot at and mugged and....JUST KIDDING! Ha ha Everything is going well.

Ok well I'm about out of time. Write you again next week! Thanks for telling me about what's going on at home! Haha I loved the story about Calvin and Kioske. Ok I need to send this before the computers shut off or something. The power in the library shut off right before I got on because there was a big storm outside. I love the rain here on the east coast.Love you all!
Love,

Elder Cooper Boice

(Editor's note: Cooper's girlfriend, Lauren, emailed me to say that she had just received a snail mail letter from Cooper. Apparently Cooper is leaving out details that he thinks might make his mom worry. She said "The big news is that Coop and his comp were on a bus, and the police thought they were drug dealers, so they started questioning them. Well at least we know Coop is looking sharp!" )

Elder Boice in Maryland 6/3/08

Hi Coop!

Whew! This has been a super busy week! I wrote you a snail mail letter but haven't had a second to even mail it yet! It'll go out in tomorrow's mail...I promise!

We got a letter from your Maryland Mission President today! That was really sweet of him. Mission Presidents are supposed to write to the parents and send a photo as soon as the missionaries arrive, but I didn't expect him to do that since you're only going to be there a short time. What a great guy! The picture is really good of you too. My scanner doesn't work, so I'll see if I can get Dad to scan it in his computer when he gets back from Las Vegas.

Here's what the letter said:

Dear Brother and Sister Boice:

Elder Boice has arrived safely to the Maryland Baltimore Mission. We are so happy to have him here while waiting for his Visa. This is a wonderful part of the Lord's vineyard with much work to be done to strengthen the wards, branches, and stakes that are in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

This area is steeped in history. It was settled in the 1600's and made a strong contribution to the American Revolution. Annapolis was the seat of the Second Continental Congress. The property to build Washington, DC was donated to the United States by Maryland.

Although there is much American history here, the Maryland Baltimore Mission was created only years ago. The growth of the mission has been gradual over that period of time. Our mission covers the four stakes of central Maryland and one in Northern Virginia and one in Easter West Virginia. A small percentage of our missionaries serve in the city of Baltimore. The missionaries do well and are protected as long as they wear thyeir badges and proselyting clothes. It is one of the favorite places for most missionaries to serve.

Elder Boice will start his mission in the Glen Burnie Spanish area. The trainer, which we call the first companion, is elder Justin M. Kesler, one of our best missionaries. Their address is 214 Crain Court Circle, Apt TC, Glen Burnie, MD 21060.

I trust their companionship will be rewarding to both. We hope they will work hard and live close to the Spirit so they may be guided to those ready to hear the message of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is our prayer that together we can strengthen these wards, branches, and stakes so the Church may be a beacon of righteousness in a world of materialism and decaying values.

Warmest Regards,

T. Dean Moody,

PresidentMaryland Baltimore Mission