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!" )