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