Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey Family,

So I had my first baptism this last week. That was way cool. But I think I actually liked the confirmation on Sunday even better than the baptism. Even though there was food at the baptism ;) just kidding

Haha, but yep so that´s pretty much the exciting news for the week. Besides that, not much I don´t think. Encounters with cucarrachas, the weather heating up, running at night to get home on time. haha. I guess I can talk about the baptism a little though. We have a meeting every week with our ward mission leader so we were gonna plan the baptism with him. But he didn´t show up again so my comp and I just planned it. Lol seriously, people that go to church in the states have no idea what the condition of the church is down here. And vice-versa. It´s sooo different. Today I was talking with some other Elders whose bishop went and visited Utah. And it blew his mind when he saw what the church is like in Utah. Now he wants to move there haha.

But anyway. We asked members to speak, bring food, etc. We asked 2 members to give short talks and we had a back-up as well. But at the last minute they all couldn't come of course, so my comp just spoke. It was a good experience though and we had a few members come. My comp and I brought a cake that we made and the wife of the guy that got baptized brought some cake and soda as well. Funny note: the 2 baptisms I´ve seen here in Argentina, more people always appear afterward exactly when the food comes out. All in all it was good.

Today was fun too. We celebrated Thanksgiving as best we could. We had a turkey bowl. Some Elders bought a small rugby ball (you can´t find footballs down here), and we had a football game on the beach of the Paraná river. Right next to a little villa shack that someone had built. After we went to a restaurant. And I mean a REAL restaurant. Way expensive!! Well not if you convert the price to dollars but for here it was way expensive. I had a steak and french fries.

Soooo... Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! And be sure to eat some pumpkin pie for me :D

And I´ll talk to you next week! Let me know how Thanksgiving was. Oh but that reminds me! I wanted to ask (Mom) if you could tell me how to make cinnamon rolls. The other day I remembered cinnamon rolls and it just sounds amazing. Ok have a great week!
Love,

Elder Boice

November 17, 2008

Hey family,

I only have about 15 minutes then I have to be out of here so we can start working on time. Usually we do internet early in the morning but today we didn´t so now I´m super short on time. I had wanted to email Brad and Calvin too but sorry gonna have to wait til next week! I would email Bo too but I actually don´t have his email address. Does he have one?

Well I had a good week though. Actually a really good week. My new companion Elder Gilbert is really great, and after my last comp I really appreciate having a comp that works and is obedient and everything. And since I´m short on time, I´ll just talk about the highlight of the week.

My highlight was an appointment we had with our investigator Gonzalo. I sent a picture home of him, he´s the one that just got married. So we taught him a lesson about baptism because he´s ready now, and he was going to pray about it that night but he didn´t. Said he couldn´t find time alone to pray. So when we found out he didn´t pray, we talked to him, and it was kind of funny cuz I shared a funny old Chinese proverb with him. At least I think it is, I have no idea when or where I heard it. But it goes something like, "If hungry man waits with mouth open for eternity, eventually roasted peiking duck will fly into his mouth. But it could take a long time." I changed it a little to make it Argentine, but he got the gist of it. Basically you have to make time to get things done. If he wants an answer he has to go get it.

So what we did is we kneeled down with him then and there in the room with his wife to pray. And Gonzalo said a great prayer. And the Spirit came into the room and afterwards we asked him how he felt and if he thought he received his answer. He said yes. So he´s gonna get baptized this Friday. Yeah!! Our branch has a temple trip saturday so we´re doing the baptism on friday. So that´s my good news for the week. :)

Well I´ve got to go now. Chao familia. Love you. Stay strong and have faith :)
Love,

Elder Boice

Attack of the Cockroaches

Ok, these pictures are seriously disturbing, but hilarious at the same time. The first photo says "I Love You" in Spanish, spelled out in dead cockroaches. That one made me laugh out loud for 5 minutes. Sooooo disgusting. I'm so proud of Cooper for having such a great sense of humor about it all!

Adios to Elder Cepeda 11/11/08

Dear Family,

Sounds like things are going about as expected in the States right now. That´s sad to hear about the people marching against the Temples in California. Ridiculous actually but yep just fulfilment of prophecy, it has to happen sooner or later.

The stuff I hear from people down hear about the United States always annoys me, I don´t hear much, but whether it´s in favor or against the States, it´s always just completely ignorant.

Well down here in the Southern Hemisphere things are starting to heat up. I can´t wait til summer starts…ugh….that´s a joke by the way, summer hasn´t started officially but I´m already sweating all the time no matter what I´m doing. Including now typing on a computer lol.

Well this last weekend one of our investigators got married which was great. It was fun throwing rice and everything. We´ve been working with this investigator, Gonzalo, for a while. He´s been “juntado” with a lady in our ward and they have a kid, so they´re making progress, at least they´re married now and the hermana isn´t a concubina anymore. Haha we´re hoping he gets baptized soon, he doesn’t want us to rush him though.

Also yesterday early in the morning my comp Elder Cepeda finished his mission and left, so the last couple days I´ve been sticking with the other 2 Elders until my new comp gets here tomorrow. My new comp´s name is Elder Gilbert, I found that out about an hour ago. I guess I don´t really have too much exciting news about the last week. We had to waste a lot of time doing little chores and stuff before my comp went home…and his last day we just went around talking to the members.

Here´s something that might be funny or fun to read though. I just keep forgetting to talk about it because it´s an ongoing battle here. So that you know, ever since I got here we´ve been AT WAR. With all the cucarachas that live in our pension. Our kitchen is old and not very well taken care of, so it´s the main battleground. Although lately the cockroaches have been steadily pushing the line of battle further into the bathroom and occasionally breaking through the lines and attacking in the bathroom, study room, and our bedroom as well. We´ve had our victories, and they´ve had theirs, lol.

At first we were becoming accustomed to it and we began to live in peace with each other. But about 5 days ago my comp and I finally went and bought a can of Raid bug spray, and since then we´ve spurned to anger the cockroaches and war has spread across the land (or at least in our pension). I´m not joking, ever since we bought that can of bugspray and started spraying stuff, cockroaches have started coming out all over the place. I have a higher kill count than Rambo.

This morning, cuz it´s P-day, we finally cleaned out pretty well the kitchen. Haha, actually it was really funny cuz when I walked into the kitchen this morning there were cabinets and trash all over the floor, and more dead cockroaches laying all over the place than you want to know. Haha apparently our Peruvian comp had woken up in the middle of the night and he had a battle in there. I counted all the carcasses in the kitchen and I won´t tell you the number except that it was in the triple digits. We cleaned up and made a big pile of them, I have some pictures haha maybe I´ll send some. Then later this morning right before we came here we were standing around waiting to go and I felt something in my shoe and I had to throw it out. And you can already guess what it was. Haha

Well this is a long letter. And I wrote the whole thing with a group of kids playing Grand Theft Auto on the computer next to me, really loud and really annoying. But in summary: The Church is true. And no matter where you are there are problems. Whether they be political or pest-related. Haha well I hope that story brought a smile to someone´s face. Until next week, love you all. Always stay strong in standing up for what´s right.

Love,

Elder Boice

Coop and Comp 11/4/08

YAY! I just got some pictures from Cooper! He said this is a photo of him and his new companion. Pretty dazzling duo, eh?

They're currently serving somewhere in the Santa Fe, Argentina region. I'm not sure if they're standing at their house or where this picture was taken. I'll ask and find out!

Hola Familia,

It was another good week here in Argentina. It started with my birthday this last Monday. The day after was funny because for some reason the birds of the city didn´t like me that day. I went through 3 white shirts that day “porque me pegaron dos crapcitos” or in other words I got pooped on, changed my shirt later, then got pooped on again and had to change my shirt again haha.

We had interviews this last week as well which was good. I actually ended up having interviews twice this transfer because of the emergency transfer. This week was a little disappointing because we lost 2 people that were going to be baptized. Well we didn´t really lose them. One just said he didn´t feel ready and the other I´m not exactly sure what happened. We´ve been teaching a guy named Juan Carlos, he´s probably in his late 60´s. He was actually found right before I got to the area, so I wasn´t there when we found him.

But basically the story is that he was planning on taking his own life the night that we found and talked to him. Since then we´ve taught him basically everything and he was going to be baptized this next Saturday actually. But then he told us that he wanted to stop for now. He has a lot of problems with family in that they basically don´t support him in anything, and he said he feels like he wants to learn to write and to read better. Well I guess it´s easy to say that I´m still not really sure what the source of the problem is but we´ll keep working with him. He has really grown to love the church in that it´s like a family and the members really care about him. He seemed really sad when he told us he couldn´t progress any more for now, but members are passing by and so are we, so he´ll come around. In good news, we had a Stake Conference in Church yesterday, and we had 13 investigators come. Basically just because we have awesome members.

Oh so I´ll tell you a little more about what this area is like. It´s probably pretty typical for around here. There are lots of normal streets and stuff with pavement, and Argentine houses that are small and all connected. But you can round a corner and all of the sudden it looks like you just walked about 50 years further into the past. Dirt roads and cement houses with metal sheet roofs. Open sewage running through a little ditch in front of all the houses. Then you can go to certain parts of our area and all of the sudden you walked 50 years even FURTHER into the past. You´re walking down a little dirt road past horses and chickens and goats ( and of course dogs cuz we´re in South America). The houses are little shacks made of trash and chapa (scrap metal). This is where the people live whose job is riding around in their little horse-pulled carts and stealing trash that´s laying around.

Oh and I have something funny I wanted to talk about real quick. The other day we were eating those little Halloween candies that you sent me for my birthday. You know the ones that are like little wedge shapes and are orange yellow and white. (Editor's note: Candy corn is one of Cooper's favorite candies....it's funny that he can't remember the name of them now!) And there´s a Peruvian Elder here who has never seen them before. So he started taking them apart by the colors to eat them. And then I saw him later eating weird-looking pancakes and I realized that he put a bunch of the separated pieces of the Halloween candy in his pancake mix and made Halloween pancakes. Haha

Well on that note have a great week! I hope all is well besides the election madness that is going on right now. Good luck with all that! Love you all,
Love,

Elder Boice

-PS Pday is the 11th next week because of transfers