CHRISTmas week 2009

Hey fam,


It´s been a pretty fun week. Normally I would be writing on Wednesday, but tomorrow my companion and I have to spend the day in Rosario, so we´re writing today!

I guess I´ll tell you a little about my week, starting from Christmas Eve. In the morning my companion and I did a baptismal interview for a 17-year-old girl. She already has 2 kids, but that´s not too unusual in Argentina. Actually just about a month and a half ago I interviewed a different 17-year-old girl with 2 kids. She got baptized on Saturday, the day after Christmas :)

We didn´t really do too much on Christmas Eve. We had a meeting together with the zone and then everyone was supposed to go to their appointments if they had them and then just go back to their house/apartment early and clean (to avoid problems).

In Argentina we can´t really go around and sing or knock doors on Christmas Eve because missionaries would probably get attacked by drunk people.

On Christmas, all the missionaries got together as a zone, and we did our studies all together (my comp and I made a jeopardy game for the zone), then we played soccer for a while, we watched the movie "The Grinch" (we had to get permission beforehand), and then we ate empanadas for lunch. We played some funny games together with the zone while people called their families. We were in the church and there were only 2 phones so we had to take turns. Also an Elder in our zone did a magic show for us and it was really pretty good. There was a little girl in one of the branches here that died on Christmas Eve so we found out during the day that they were going to have the funeral there at the church on Christmas in the afternoon. The reason I called so late is because we had to clean up to get ready for that and then my companion and I had to find another phone somewhere else.

But I sure enjoyed talking to everyone! Sorry I called in a bad moment, oh well, it was fun getting to talk to everyone individually though. Yeah we were only supposed to talk for 40 minutes and so I bought a phone card that supposedly would last about 40 minutes, so that´s why it cut out without much warning.

Well Saturday was a pretty normal day. Sunday was different, because our branch president was out of town. So I had to teach priesthood, direct sacrament meeting, give a talk, and like always my companion and I do the tithing as well. It was fun though.

Yesterday we had another lesson with Romina. She still doesn´t know if she has received an answer from God or felt the Spirit, even though when we taught her she looked like she was about to cry. She says she just feels peace and so she doesn´t know if the church is true yet. She did try to fast last week, but she got to hungry and didn´t make it, haha. I guess it might be hard for her. She´s never fasted before and she´s a pretty skinny girl. We´ll see what happens. She still seems like she´s so close...

Ok well that´s all for this week. Next week I´ll be writing on Tuesday again because of transfers. I love you all!, and thanks Dad for sending all the pictures of Christmas!

Love,

Elder Boice

Animoto.com

Merry CHRISTmas!

(Editor's note:  YAY!  Coop is going to call home on Christmas day!)

Hey fam,


We´ve had a good week down here. I´ll start with a funny story. So the last time I wrote I think I mentioned that we had gone about a week without water. Well the day after I wrote we got the water fixed, so I could finally take a shower. But of course, while I was showering the electricity AND water went off. At the exact moment that I was completely covered in soap, haha. Oh well, so I just had to dry off and wait a few more days until we got everything fixed and then I got to finish my shower.

Well so anyway, every funny story should be followed by something spiritual. Our investigator Romina is progressing really well. She is one of those incredibly few people I´ve met on the mission that actually UNDERSTAND the message we share and what it means if it´s true. She still hasn´t received an answer through prayer to know that it´s true. But she´s been fasting since yesterday and she probably ended her fast a few hours ago. We´re going by later today to see if she´s received an answer to her prayers yet. :D

This monday I did divisions with a Chilean elder in our zone. It was a lot of fun and we were able to teach a lot. (In my opinion the Chileans are the funnest latins to be with)

Yesterday was a pretty weird day. In the morning, the mission home called us and told us that a mini-missionary (a local serving as a missionary for 6 weeks) was heading back home to our area. The problem was that he hadn´t been released from being a missionary yet. So we travelled by bus to the city he lives in in order to find him before he visited too many girls by himself as a missionary haha. He was fine, but we had to hang out with him all day until the district president here could release him at night. It was a pretty fun day and we found a pretty cool guy that we taught.

Well that´s pretty much it for this week. Talk to you all in 2 days :)


love,

Elder Boice

December 16, 2009

Hey family,


I´ve got to run so there's not much time to write.

This last week we´ve gone without running water. It´s been a few days since I last showered haha. A few highlights of the week were: We taught a lady in english. She was an english teacher and talks ok. It was way fun and the spirit was strong but she´s afraid to ask God because I think she felt that what we shared was true, but doesn´t want to change.

We traveled up to a different city on Monday and did some baptismal interviews. (Our zone is number 1 in the mission for baptisms this month so far, yeah!)

And yesterday we all travelled to another city to have interviews with the President. It was a great week, and interviews were great. We made a lot of good goals and plans with the zone.

Onward to victory!

I love you all and I´ll talk to you next Friday at 11:00!  (Editor's note:  YAY!!  Coop gets to call home on Christmas!)   PS I´ll still be writing next wednesday. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Boice

December 9, 2009

(Cooper with a companion and the Mission President and his wife.  I think Cooper must be the tallest person in the entire country of Argentina.  He's always the tallest guy in every picture he sends!)

Hey family,


Thanks for sending the pictures from Thanksgiving, they were really fun to see. P.S. Benjamin is huge now :O

Anyway it was a pretty dog-gone good week. Something cool that happened on Thursday is we were just walking through our area to get somewhere, and while we were passing by a house I felt like it was important for some reason and so I said to my companion "hey who lives there?", and he told me that there are a couple investigators that they had stopped going by a while ago and he had forgot about them. So we ended up talking with them and we made an appointment for another day.

Friday was a pretty slow day with lots of walking. Saturday was cool I guess just because we taught a really cool lady who can´t get baptized because she´s not married with the guy she´s living with. Apparently he used to hate us, but we were able to have a lesson with him as well which was big progress.

Sunday was funny. We were about to go back to our apartment at night but we wanted to finish our goal of contacts, and the last one to reach our goal ended up being super cool. It was a lady who knew how to speak english fairly well, and she had been in contact with missionaries doing english classes for years but noone had ever given her a Book of Mormon or taught her. She seems like she´s been prepared a lot, and she´s going through a tough time right now, so we´ll see what happens.

Anyways, Monday was a good day as well, we had a couple of fun lessons. We taught a guy that had an autoshop in the garage of his house, and so we taught him sitting on the siding of the oil pit with our legs hanging down. He was a nice guy but didn´t understand very well.

And then yesterday was Tuesday. We had a zone conference with over half the mission. It was a special Christmas zone conference and it was really fun and really spiritual as well. All the zones either sang songs or did Christmas skits that we had prepared beforehand and it was really great and turned out really well. We didn´t end up getting back to our city until about 11:00 at night because we had to travel to Rosario for the conference.

Today we played soccer together for preparation day in the morning and it was fun. I´m still pretty tired and I´m hoping there´ll be some time for a nap before P-day ends haha.

(Editor's note:  I sent Cooper a picture of his cousin, Tanner, in the hospital after his shoulder surgery.)
Aw man, what happened to Tanner? baseball?  (Editor's note: Yes!)


Hey I just really that Tanner and I both are named after old western occupations. The Tanner and the Cooper. When people ask me what my name is and I tell them Cooper, I either tell them I was named after the MiniCooper or I tell them that in spanish it would be Barrilero. Haha.
 
Ok well that´s all for now. I guess I´ll be calling home in a few weeks so that´ll be really fun but you´ll have to think of some questions for me and I´ll think of some for you so that I know what to talk about, haha.

Ok well I love you all a ton. I hope you all have a great week, watch out for the cold and I´ll watch out for the mosquitos!  (Editor's note:  It's summer in Argentina now!)

Love,

Elder Boice

December 2, 2009

Here is a picture of all of the Zone Leaders in Cooper's mission.  He's in the front row (3rd from the right)

Hi family,


Wow I can´t believe we´re already in December. We´ve made some plans and stuff for next year already and it looks super weird seing the numbers 2010. This year is going by at lightning speed.

But anyway, I´ll tell you about my amazing last week.

The last time I wrote was on Tuesday because of transfers. Well, later that day I started feeling pretty sick, and the next morning as well. I think that was the first time on the mission that I actually took some medicine. I had a fever and felt pretty crappy but the next day after I took some medicine I felt better and was able to travel to my new area.  Luckily I only get sick on P-days of transfer days so I have yet to miss a day of work haha.

So yep, I arrived fine on Wednesday and met my new companion Elder Koch (pronounced Elder Cook). Something funny that happened that day was that we went and got food and when we got to our house we were inside and my companion thought there was a mosquito on the back of his neck so he brushed it off. I looked and saw him brush a giant spider off his neck onto his shoulder. So I was nice enough not to tell him what it was until I had brushed it off his back for him and he saw it on the floor. Haha so that was my experience from the first night that I was here.

The next day we did our weekly and monthly planning and did 4 baptismal interviews for some of the elders in our zone. We interviewed a couple and some little girls and they were all pretty cool.

Friday was a really cool day. It was really rainy, but we started off the day right. In our companionship study we decided to read 3 Nephi 11 together (when Christ comes to the Americas), and then to pray about it together and ask if the Book of Mormon is true. The Spirit testified as we read and very strongly as we asked that indeed the Book of Mormon is true. And so after that we went through all the teaching records of old investigators that we have. I felt really good about one name so I wrote the name and address in my agenda and then we went out to work.

We have to travel by bus for about 20 minutes to get to our area that we work in, so we travelled there and went to a few appointments that we had set up. All our appointments failed us, so after the last one I told my companion we could go by the name I had written down in my agenda. We looked at the address and it happened to be the exact house we were standing in front of. We had an appointment with the family that lives there but they told us they were busy just a minute ago, and so my companion told me I must have the wrong name written down cuz a different family lives there. But we had seen another lady behind the house so we went and asked her if she was the person we were looking for and she said yes. So we pulled some chairs and started teaching her behind her house and then a couple minutes later the husband got home and so we all went inside and taught the Restoration.

They turned out to be a great family and they´re fairly new to the city. The husband said that he used to go to church but they moved and he stopped going, and he was just waiting for God to call him to go back again. We said guess what, This is that day! And he said yep looks like it. Haha, so they turned out to be a really cool family and we were able to testify to them that we had just read in the Book of Mormon and asked if it was true that morning, and that we had received an answer, and we invited them to do the same. We´ll find out tomorrow if they´ve done so. :)

Saturday and Sunday were normal days I guess, just with lots of rain, and I forgot my rain jacket and umbrella in my last area so that stunk but I found a rain jacket hidden away in a bag in my new house here, yay!

So yep, I´m out of time to write now, but Monday was Mission Council which was fun. We talked about all our goals and new plans in all of the zones.

Oh yeah! One more thing. Last night my last companion called me and told me that a guy we taught once this last transfer ended up murdering someone a couple of days ago and now he´s in hiding. We never were able to teach him a full lesson, but he seemed like a normal guy. How weird.

Ok well everyone have a great week, everything is going pretty well down here. We´re doing our best to have a white Christmas (baptize). So I hope everyone´s enjoying the Christmas season up there. Just so you know, Christmas is WAY cooler in the states!

(Editor's note:  I heard some reports of serious flooding in Argentina and read some letters from other missionaries down there who had to practically swim in the water to get around, so I asked Cooper if the rains were that bad where he was.  Here is his reply:)   No it´s not flooding where I am. When I was in Entre Rios a couple transfers ago I was close to the city of Concordia and it is flooded there, but the missionaries are fine. There´s definitely no missionaries that have had to swim as far as I know, haha. But this Monday all the zone leaders had our monthly meeting with President and he just told the elders up there to be careful, and apparently there´s problems with snakes coming because of the rain so to watch out for that too.  That does sound like fun though I wish I could be up there.
 
(Editor's note:  Cooper sent a box of cookies called "alfajores", along with some photos and letters.)  Yay! I´m glad the alfajores made it through.  The whole alfajor thing is pretty funny. All the Elders down here LOVE them and wonder why they don´t have them in the states. But then they eat a snickers and remember why.
love you all.

Love,

Elder Boice

Happy Thanksgiving 2009!

Hi again family,


You probably weren´t expecting me to write a day early, but today is the last P-day of the transfer! Every single transfer is better and goes by faster, and now another one has come to an end.

My companion and I came really early today because we had to send a bunch of information to the mission home and then they sent us the new transfer list.

And guess what? I´m leaving my area, again!, and this might be the last time, who knows. I´m going off to a city that´s called "Venado Tuerto". You can look up what that means in spanish and you´ll probably get a laugh.   (Editor's note:  it means "one-eyed deer".)   It´s another one of those "hard zones" so we´ll have to change that like we changed it in the city I´m in now. I´m excited to go though, it´s always fun to go to a new place and have a new companion. My new companion is another one from the States, his name is Elder Koch, pronounced Elder "Cook".

(Editor's note:  I looked up a picture of Venado Tuerto online and this is one of the pictures of Cooper's new city.  It looks pretty big.)

Yep, so anyway I´ll give you an update of the last week, or the last 6 days I guess:

It was a pretty good week, we were able to teach a lot and we found a TON of new people that we started teaching. A couple people were pretty interesting too. One lady that we taught seems crazy because she´s in her 60´s probably but she seemed like she was flirting with us. Turns out she´s just nice but we did have to tell her that she can´t touch our knees and arms and kiss us on the cheek anymore, haha. She actually came to stake conference this sunday, yay!

Then there was another guy that we taught who´s probably one of the weirdest guys I´ve ever met. He told us that he had seen giants and that they live under the ground and stuff, he was a pretty genuine conspiracy-theorist. So that was interesting. And then there was another lady that we taught who told us that there´s a "curandero" that lives a couple houses down from her. A curandero is basically like a witch-doctor healer guy. I don´t really know what the translation would be in english.  (Editor's note:  it translates to mean witch doctor or quack doctor.)  And I´ve never met one either, but her son thinks that he is bewitched by this curandero, so that was weird as well.

That´s another fun part of serving a mission, is you really get to know what kind of people are out there in the world, and let me tell you there are some WEIRD people in this world. ;)

Well anyway so yesterday one of the missionaries in our zone died (finished his mission and went home). So in the morning we took him to the bus terminal and we spent the day with his companion who´s waiting to get a new companion now. We had a pretty good day. Last night was one of those really frustrating lessons. We taught a great lesson to a guy we have taught before a couple of times. He´s a really nice guy and everything but he´s just one of those people who has NO common sense when it comes to religion. That just really bugs me. I don´t think we could have taught any clearer, the Spirit was obviously there. We probably could have shown him a video tape of the leader of his church admitting that he was wrong and it still wouldn´t have made a difference. I guess when it comes down to it, the scripture is completely true that says "I know my sheep, and my sheep know my voice"

Hey mom, let me know when you get the package I sent home! If it makes it that is. I sent some food (the best alfajores in the mission) and apparently you´re not supposed to do that. So if they don´t send it back to me(or eat it) it´ll be all yours. There´s a bunch of old letters and stuff too that I didn´t want to throw away, and also some Cds with pictures :)

Ok well anyway, that brings me to today and transfers. Tomorrow I´ll be travelling and waiting in a bus terminal all day to meet all the Elders in my new zone probably. I hope you all have a great day tomorrow! Thanks for always being a great family, love you all tons,

Love,

Elder Boice

November 18, 2009

Hey family,


I don´t think I have too much to report this week. All in order for the most part. ;)

Well I guess I probably always say that but then I go flipping through my agenda and see that there´s always at least something interesting.

I´ll start with last Thursday. The mission wanted all the missionaries to go to the biggests plaza in their city and to sing christmas carols on the same day, the 15th of November. So a few days before, my companion and I went to "city hall" to ask for permission to do something like that in our city. It was kind of funny cuz we ended up having to run all over the place and we spent the whole morning running around and waiting for cunfused city officials to figure out what we needed to do. I think they might have been confused because no one really asks permission to do stuff here in Argentina. Maybe now I understand why haha. So anyway then after that we travelled to a different city in the afternoon to do another baptismal interview.

Friday was kind of a bummer because we were only able to work in the morning because my companion was pretty sick. Not really sick, he gets really bad migraines pretty often and he had a really bad one this day, so we just stayed inside and my companion took some medicine and slept and I just studied.

Saturday was a pretty normal day, then on Sunday in the afternoon our whole zone went to the plaza in the middle of the city. My companion learned some Christmas carols on the guitar so it sounded really good when everyone sang and we had the guitar as well.

Monday was good as well, and then yesterday the assitants to the President came and did divisions with us. That was really fun, I spent the day with one of the assistants who is a little Colombian. We taught a big family which was great. And during the day we had a meeting with all the zone, and an Elder that goes home this weekend made us all a peach cobbler which was amazing haha. I didn´t really like it before the mission but yesterday I ate it and it was amazing! haha

Oh yeah that reminds me Mom. A couple weeks ago I got a DearElder from you that you forwarded me from another missionary mom who´s son is in the Mendoza mission. It was an email about how they got people at the airport to cheer for the new missionaries. Well anyway I thought that was super cool that you sent me that because it was from Elder Squires, we were in the same district in the MTC and he´s a really great guy, it was fun to hear from him. :)

Ok well that´s all for this week. This morning we all played soccer as a zone.  We do that pretty much every P-day. I don´t know that I´m getting any better but at least I can run around for a while.

Love you all! Make this week better than the last one! Oh and I don´t know when Thanksgiving is but it´s gotta be soon. Have a good one whenever it is!

Love,

Elder Boice

Happy Veteran's Day 11/11/09

Hey fam,
Sounds like Mom and Dad had a fun adventure in Boston, lots of history.  Speaking of which, apparently yesterday was "Tradition Day" here in Argentina.  No one did anything I don´t think, but a family told us that it was a holiday and they started talking the past of Argentina and all the problems.  What a blessing to live in a country that was founded on freedom and doesn´t have a long history of dissapearings from the government, with revolutions and military take-overs all the time.  Which is funny to think about knowing the people here.

But anyway let me tell you about my last week!  (from what I have in the notes in my agenda)
Last thursday we had a meeting with the stake president and a bishop because they´re having trouble getting along with the missionaries in a ward.  Then we taught a couple lessons with a 12 year-old recent convert in our ward.  He put on a tie and everything and came with us to teach.  (He´s a really cool little kid)  One lesson was funny because we taught a guy from a certain church that likes to kind of overdo everything.  This guy said the closing prayer standing up with his arms out and almost yelling.  And afterwards our new deacon (Mario) said that he was scared when the guy was praying.  I thought that was kind of humorous, just cuz when small children get scared during a prayer, there´s probably something wrong going on.  haha.

Well the day after was Friday, and my comp and I travelled to Rosario for mission council.  We all talked about how our zones are doing and what´s gonna be going on with the mission during the next month.  It´s always lots of fun cuz there´s always good friends there.

Our zone is actually doing really well right now.  The zone I´m in has the reputation of being "the hardest zone in the mission", probably just because it´s more wealthy.  But as of now we´re almost the top in the mission for baptisms during this transfer.  :)   There´s good missionaries here and I think that mindset of being the "hardest zone" is going away now.

On Saturday my comp and I travelled to a city to do some more baptismal interviews.  That was fun and I got to interview a pretty cool guy who´s a paramedic.

Sunday was good.  We´re teaching a family who has a 11 year-old son named Maxi. And he showed up at church before we did!  Then his dad came for the last hour.  That was fun because Maxi had only been to church 1 time before and now he´s really liking it.

On Monday we did divisions with the Elders in our apartment.  And I went with Elder Deforest (he was Brady Tucker´s comp in the MTC).  We had a good day and were able to teach a few lessons and find some new people.

Yesterday was a good day as well, we had a meeting together as a zone, and now I´m at today.
Yep so that was pretty much my week.  Right now after I finish doing email I´m going to try to send a package home.  I´m gonna send a couple cd´s of pictures, a bunch of old mail that I don´t want to throw away cuz mom might get mad at me :P, and some treats.

Ok thats all for now.  I LOVE YOU ALL, you´re a great family, have a great week.

Love,
Elder Boice

November 4, 2009

Hi family,


Well I hope everyone had a fun Halloween. That doesn´t really exist down here, even though there will usually be some kids that try to do something. We saw a little group of kids dressed up on Halloween night trying to have a little costume party in their house, but that was it.

Thanks for sending the pics by the way :) , Brad looks super tall now.

Well this last week has been a little bit weird. Last Wednesday my companion and I talked on the phone with an Elder in our zone who´s been going through a rough time I guess. That was pretty weird cuz I had never talked with an Elder who was negative about the mission before. Then on Thursday he just kind of dissapeared so we had to go look for him and find him. The mission president came down and they talked and now he´s ok (and staying in the mission). Talk about a crazy day!

Well then on Friday we travelled to another city to do another baptismal interview, and we worked there with those Elders for the day. That was a lot of fun. I spent the day with an Elder from southern Argentina (Chubut), and so it was fun getting to know him. The church is pretty darn small where he comes from.

On Saturday I got "the death call". The mission secretary called and asked me a few questions and said that you should be getting an email pretty soon with my tenative flight plans. So be on the look out for that.

We also went to a baptism Saturday afternoon. It was pretty rainy and stormy outside so not many people were daring enough to come. I still don´t really understand the whole rain thing with Argentina. Everyone has some kind of superstitious belief that you would have to be crazy to go outside when it´s raining. Oh well.

A funny story from Sunday: we found a super cute little puppy Sunday night before we went back to our house. We knocked a couple doors looking for the owner but no one claimed it. My companion couldn´t leave it in the street (cuz it looked like a storm was coming) so contrary to mission rules we took it to our house. We decided to ask for permission to keep it for the night so we called the mission home and they told us we could keep it for the night. So Cody (the puppy) slept in the bathroom and in the morning we just put it back where we found it which was kind of sad haha.

Besides that we taught a couple of pretty crazy ladies this last week. (In the sense of their beliefs about the gospel.) It´s always fun teaching people that are out of the ordinary. We´ve seen a lot of hearts melt this last week. People that were way hard-hearted have totally changed their opinions in just a minute or two after talking with them. Thats way fun to see.

Ok well that´s about all the time I have to talk this week. I love you all! Thanks for being so supportive and such a great family. May this next week be your best week ever :D. Take care!

Love,

Elder Boice

Happy birthday Coopie! 10/27/09

Happy birthday to Cooper yesterday!

Dear Family,

We had a good week and yesterday was my birthday, boy I feel old now.

We had lots of fun this last week cuz my companion and I did 8 baptismal interviews. On Friday we travelled to a different city in the zone to do interviews but we ended up missing our stop and we had to get off in the next city haha. We were kind of worried because our zone is on the border of the mission; we thought we might have left the mission. But turns out we didn´t haha. So anyway we ended up getting to the city, seeing a marriage, doing some interviews, and then we stayed for the baptism of the couple that got married. I got to do the interviews for the couple which was cool cuz I love hearing people´s conversion stories and cool experiences.

The next day we ended up travelling back to the same city to do another interview. The Elders in that city have been working really hard and they had 5 baptisms this last weekend. The Elders that were there before "killed" the area and had to be taken out. So it just goes to show what faith and a good attitude can do.

Something cool that happened in our area was that we went and found an old investigator and taught him. He had been in lots of surgery and stuff so I had never been able to teach him, but now he´s at home recovering and he wants to be baptized. We gave him a blessing of health and he´s feeling pretty good, I think the biggest difficulty could be his wife who is not at all excited about him listening to the missionaries or getting baptized.

Let´s see, this last week my companion made a big bottle of maple syrup for a young couple that we´re teaching, that was pretty funny. The lady said that she had been craving it ever since the missionaries made her some years before.

Oh and some other cool news. Today we got an email from President saying that Elder Bednar is gonna be coming to Argentina this next month and that he´s going to talk to our mission! Woohoo! that´ll be awesome.

Ok I think that´s all I´ve got for now family, I love you all, have a great week!

Love,

Elder Boice

Next week is Cooper's birthday!

(Editor's note:  I was looking for a picture to post with this letter and found this one that Cooper had sent me a couple of months ago.  He said it was the view from his front window where he lived in the last city before his most recent transfer.  I love the sheep next door!

By the way, Cooper's birthday is NEXT week, October 27th, so if you'd like to write him a birthday letter and email it to me at trinaboice@gmail.com  then I'll send it to him in time.  Thanks!)

Hi family,
Thanks for the photos and the updates on everything. Looks like fun having the birthday party for Brad and Bridgette, I enjoyed seeing the pictures!

It´s been a fun first week of this new transfer. I don´t think too much has happened in terms of really funny or spiritual stories. But I´ve been getting to know my companion better and listening to his stories which has been really fun/funny. My new comp is Elder Mortensen, from New Mexico. He´s only got like a year in the mission and he´s been a zone leader for longer than me :)

He´s a really good leader, and has lots of talents, really fun Elder.  He´s got a pretty interesting life and he´s a really fun Elder. I guess he pretty much dropped out of high school and lived in his truck for a while, and just spent all of his time rock climbing for a good amount of time. He ended up getting things fixed up eventually and he started studying and going to church and everything. The other day we ate lunch with the Bishop and his family, and their 10 year old daughter started playing the guitar. So my comp asked if he could play and he just started playing a couple super good songs. I was impressed.

Well but anyway things are going well. We´ve done 2 baptismal interviews this last week. We have one more today and then 5 more on Friday, our zone is starting out really well. :D

Oh hey and I live in a little house of 4 Elders, and one of the new Elders that came is from Uruguay. I think he´s the only Uruguayan(is that you would say it?) in the mission, and he´s really funny. The poor guy lives like on the border of the mission, right across the Paraná river. A couple of transfers ago when I was in the province of Entre Rios we went to the river one Pday and looked across at Uruguay. I basically saw his house because he lives RIGHT THERE on the other side haha.

Hey mom, your new book looks really cool you wrote that super fast!!  (Editor's note:  I sent him a picture of the front cover of my newest book.  It hits store shelves in November!)


Oh and this last week we had zone conference and I got your package, so I´ve been eating really good! Thanks a ton Mom I really enjoyed (am enjoying still) all the food and especially enjoyed all the letters. I thought that was really cool that Brad sent me his testimony from EFY, and I enjoyed everything that everyone wrote :D
Ok well anyway I think that´s everything for now. I love you all! and have a great week!!!

Love,

Elder Boice

Brad's birthday October 13, 2009

Hey family!,

I hope everything's going good on the home front! I´m writing a day early because today is transfers. We had to take care of sending a bunch of numbers and making calls because of transfers so I don´t have much time to write now.

But it was a short week so not too much happened. Basically the highlight of the week was on Sunday when Camilo got baptized (I sent a couple pictures). That was really cool and pretty much all the members love him cuz he bore his testimony on Sunday and talked about his conversion and how he finally realized why he came to Argentina, because when he came he had no idea why. Definitely a convert that I´ll never forget, and I´m sure we´ll keep in touch.

Besides that another spiritual experience was on Friday one of the sister missionaries wanted a blessing of comfort and asked me to do it for her. She wanted me to do it in english so that she could understand, and it´s been a LONG time since I´ve given a blessing in english, and for the last 3 months I haven´t really spoken english hardly at all, so my voice sounded kind of different to me. Wierd haha. But anyway, I felt like maybe I was more in tune this time, because I think it was one of the most special that I´ve given, the sister was crying and I almost was as well. A memorable experience.

Ok well I don´t think I have much more news from the week. But as for transfers, I´m really excited. I´m staying in the same area and my new companion is really funny and a total stud. We´re going to have a good 6 weeks here.

Ok I love you all family, and

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRAD!!!!!!

love,

Elder Boice

October 7, 2009

Dear family,


It was a great week with lots of fun. I´ll give you a day by day run down of what happened.

Last Thursday we did a lot of planning in the morning and then we spent the day handing out invitations to General Conference. We didn´t have much time because we had to travel to Rosario that night because we had mission counsel the next day. So we stayed the night in the mission home in Rosario.

Friday was mission conference. Pretty fun actually. The icing on the cake was that the zone leaders from my last area told me that a girl I taught there is getting baptized finally.

Saturday and Sunday we went to General Conference. Everyone in the city had to come to our chapel because it´s the stake center and the only chapel with a satellite. We saw about half of conference on Saturday because we went and looked for investigators and stuff, but on Sunday we saw everything. Our investigator Camilo (from the Dominican Republic) came and even brought a friend. It´s cool to see the change in him, he got a haircut, took out his earring, and came in a suit. Today we did an asado (barbeque) with all the missionaries in the zone and he showed us how to cook.

On Monday we saw a miracle!! haha So...my companion and I went to the church in the afternoon just to use the bathroom, and the patriarch was there doing geneology. We were talking to him for a couple minutes when these 2 teenage girls just randomly came in. We asked if we could help them and they asked us if we taught catequesis (catholic school's catequism). The patriarch excitedly responded “Of course! And even more!” Haha so we taught the 2 girls in the church with the patriarch. How much more perfect could it get?

We also taught the friend that Camilo brought to General Conference but he moved to a different area yesterday so the sister missionaries are gonna have to teach him.

Yesterday we found a really cool family. We saw a giant parrot sitting on a perch in front of a guy´s house, so we went and knocked on the door and started talking to the guy about his parrot and then he let us inside. We taught the whole family of 4 and they cried when we were talking about families and asked them what there family means to them. It was really good until some family friend showed up who is apparently a self-proclaimed preacher. He started preaching false doctrine about how he was a catholic priest in a former life and the Spirit left and so we just set an appointment for another day. Really good family though haha.

(Editor's note:  I periodically send Cooper words  in Spanish for him to learn and this was his reply on the one I sent this week):  Haha thanks for sending me the spanish word. I really do love learning spanish, and I think what I like most is learning all the different dialects from different places. So far my favorite is the way the Chileans speak.


I think it´s gonna really fun to talk with you after the mission because we may be teaching 2 completely different languages haha. Spanish in South America (at least in Argentina and Chile for sure) is not exactly very proper like I assume the spanish is in Spain. But that´s what makes it so much fun.

(Another editor's note:  The Church has just released a new Spanish Bible that includes some really great footnotes, indexing, glossary, etc so I asked if Cooper knew about it yet.  He had this to say): Yeah I think they announced it in the last general conference but now it´s finally here. I ordered a nice pretty one :) but I´m not really sure if I´ll use it much because my other "Santa Biblia" is nice and marked up and I have one of those memories where remember on what part of the page everything is but not where the reference is haha. I guess I might just have to learn everything over again ...

Ok well that´s pretty much everything. Love you family! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Boice

September 30, 2009

!Hola familita! (little family)
How is everyone? Thanks for the updates, that´s interesting about the ward change, I hope everyone likes the changes.

Sounds like mom and dad are pretty busy, Mom you gotta calm down! I don´t know how you do it.

But anyway I guess it´s my turn to tell about my week. Starting from last Wednesday. We´ve taught Camilo, our investigator from the Dominican Republic quite a few times. Last Wednesday we went to his house (he lives upstairs in a women´s shoe store haha), and I fixed his computer for him and then we taught about the plan of salvation.

The next day we had lunch with a member family and they invited him to come too so that was pretty fun. On Sunday Camilo went to church and then came to some meeting for young adults that night and he brought a friend too. That was really cool and helped a lot too. Camilo doesn´t live in our area but he was coming to our ward because he has friends here, but now he´s made friends in the ward where he´s technically supposed to go and the sister missionaries in that area are gonna start teaching him.

One of the sister missionaries actually got really mad at us because we were teaching someone from their area haha. But anyway, yesterday was probably the last time my companion and I will teach him, and it was the first time my companion and I cried in a lesson I think. Talking with Camilo about his story and about the pre-mortal existence we all felt like we knew each other before this life, and I really believe it. The sister missionaries are gonna finish teaching him and he´s gonna be baptized next week.

In other news from the last week, we had a zone conference with 2 zones and it was in our chapel so it was pretty fun because we had to get a lot of things ready for it and we taught a class/workshop to the 2 zones as well. My companion and I made a big remote control out of cardboard and we taught about different teaching techniques and keeping "control" of the lesson. It was pretty fun, we had a practice lesson and used the remote control to "freeze" the people teaching and talk with the class. (Editor's note: the picture above is from Cooper's Zone Conference. He's the tallest person in Argentina, I think!)

Oh also yesterday we helped with a move. An investigator family moved from another area into ours and so the missionaries did the move for them. I like doing moves in Argentina, it´s just so much simpler than in the States haha.

Let´s see, we also organized an activity for the youth. On Saturday we just played a bunch of sports and stuff. We couldn´t play with them but it was still fun because we got investigators and less-actives to come.Ok well I can´t really think of much more to say. So I guess that´s it for now! Love you family!
Love,

Elder Boice

September 23, 2009

Hey Family,

Thanks a lot for the pictures, that´s always fun to see pictures of people I haven´t seen for a long time (the Sheridan family looks way different now!). And it looks like everyone had a lot of fun on your weekend in the desert.

Well I don´t think there´s too much to tell about this past week.We did another service project for a family in the ward. They live on a corner and there´s a bunch of tall grass and trash and stuff in their yard. They´re both return missionaries but they´re kind of less-active now. So anyway we helped them out with that and cut the grass and cleaned up a little. It was pretty funny because we didn´t have a weed-wacker to cut the grass with so we went around the neighborhood asking around if someone could loan us one. (Note: no one uses a real lawnmower to cut the grass, they use weedwackers). But of course no one had one and the people that did lied and said they didn´t, but that was ok cuz this family eventually borrowed one from an uncle or something. So that was a fun service activity. I think we don´t really do a whole lot of service in our mission, so it´s always fun when we can.

I´d say the highlight of this last week was one of our investigators, Camilo. He´s the guy I mentioned last week who´s from the Dominican Republic. On Saturday we taught him for the second time and it was a really good lesson. We taught him in the church with a member. And we asked him if he had prayed about the Book of Mormon. He said yes, and that he felt wierd. We asked why and he said because he didn´t feel anything when he asked but that he felt something now. He said "como si algo bajó y subió en mi pecho", (as if something had moved in his chest). It was one of the few times in my mission where an investigator feels the Spirit and points it out on his own.

So it was a really good lesson, and on Monday we taught him again and watched the movie of the Restoration. He wants to be baptized but wants to time to prepare because he says it´s gonna take time so that he can leave the world.

We have another lesson today with him in like an hour.So I´d say in our area things are going really well. Yesterday we went to help out a different area in the zone because they´re not doing so well. We´re still trying to figure out why.

But anyway, I guess that´s a little summary of my week.

I love you all, take care! or as they say here (¡Cuidensén!)
Love,

Elder Boice

September 16, 2009

Dear Family,
I hope everyone´s doing well. Sounds like Mom´s super busy so I´m sure she´s ok cuz she´s in her environment ;)

That´s exciting that Jaren is going to Argentina! He´s gonna love it. I can´t believe Brady only has 4 months left and his parents already have his flight plans. Hey speaking of Brady, want to know something funny? I´m actually living in the same house with his companion from the MTC (Elder DeForest). I can´t wait to hear Brady´s stories from the mission, I´m sure he´ll have some good ones since he´s serving in Buenos Aires.

Anyway, it was a good week here. On Friday we did divisions and I stayed in my area with an Elder from Chile that´s really funny. He doesn´t know how to say much in english but the stuff he does say he says with a really good accent. He learned english before the mission because he always listened to Destiny´s Child, haha so he talks like a black woman, it´s pretty entertaining.

But anyway, it was a pretty uneventful day except we taught a Jehova´s witness which was pretty fun.On Saturday we did a little service for an old couple in our ward. The husband is paralyzed in half his body and they live in really poor conditions, but they didn´t want us to come and help, so my comp just told them "Ok well we´ll be at your house Saturday morning ready to work so find something for us to do, cuz if not we´ll just have to wash the dogs or something." That was pretty funny, but so anyway we showed up on Saturday and helped them clean and stuff. I thought they just had a dirt floor but I started sweeping in their "kitchen" and realized that there was a cement floor deep down there, so we uncovered that and fixed and cleaned some stuff. The abuelita (grandmother) gave us a jar filled with chile pepper things cuz they wanted to give us something, which was really nice.

A funny note from the week is that my companion borrowed from another elder a "pet trainer" thing. It´s like a remote control that sends out a really high frequency that annoys dogs, so of course since Argentina is filled with dogs we had a lot of fun with that as we walked around during the week.

On Sunday night the sisters in the zone called because they wanted a blessing of comfort. They were just feeling pretty down and felt like they were doing things wrong. My companion said it changed completely the way he thinks of the sister missionaries, because he used to think they were just the young women who couldn´t get married, but now he sees that they have something really special that Elders just don´t have.

There´s a few really good people we´ve been teaching recently. One is a family that´s really nice. We still haven´t met the daughter because she´s a computer addict and she´s always on the computer. Haha, sound familiar? It´s actually the first time I´ve seen this here because hardly anyone has a computer in their house.

Also yesterday we taught a really great guy from the Dominican Republic. I think we´re now officially teaching the only black man in all of Argentina, haha. He was really awesome though, we taught him in the church, and I think he just might be a golden investigator. We´ll see. We gave him a tour of the church afterwards and when we showed him the baptismal font we talked to him about baptism as we looked at a picture on the wall of Christ´s baptism. The Spirit was stronger at that moment than during the whole lesson which was really cool, I had never done that before.

Well that´s about all I have to report from this week. Have a great week everyone! Take care! I love you all!
Love,

Elder Boice

9/9/09

Hi family!!!,
Hey sounds like everyone had a fun Labor day. I´ve only got a few minutes to write so I´ll make it quick. It was a really busy week, it just flew by.

My first couple days we travelled to Rosario for a mission conference with all the zone leaders to plan out the next month. Things are really different now and it´s much more complicated teaching our investigators becuase planning is more complicated . It´s a lot of fun though. I´m getting to know the area and I really like it. The members here feed us like every day.

My companion´s name is Elder Saavedra. He´s from Chile and we have the same time in the mission. It´s pretty funny because he actually reminds me of Bryce Joe sometimes. He´s a Chilean Bryce. :) Haha yeah I think having a latin comp helps a lot with the spanish. When I make phone calls a lot of the time people think I´m my Chilean companion. And the other day when I was meeting the elders in the zone one Peruvian elder asked me if I was mexican haha.

Lets see. On Monday we had a meeting with all our missionaries in the zone and we got the stake president to come and speak to us, and what we´re trying to do is motivate everyone to "fast" from the things they need to change as missionaries. Or in other words we´re trying to purify ourselves (become more obedient) as a zone.

Yeah I´m having fun getting to know the new area and trying to figure out how to be a zone leader. It´s fun having a comp that has as much time as I do in the mission. We actually entered the mission at the same time, I never had seen him before though. We´re actually gonna have our next zone conference the 25th of September. The zone leaders have "mission conference" at the beginning of every month so I´ll be there in the mission home a little more now, it´ll be easier for packages to make it to me.

Haha that´s really cool how Janelle got proposed to, is her fiancé Polynesian? We actually got letters this last week and I got a DearElder.com from her, but she must have sent it before she got proposed to because she didn´t mention getting proposed to.

That sounds like you had a pretty fun labor day in the desert, you´ll have to send me those pictures! And yeah it was actually getting pretty hot in my last area, but it´s cooler down here. Yesterday I actually had to take out my jacket again, but today it´s nice out. Like spring already.

Oh! I almost forgot. The only things I can think of that I would like for my birthday are peanut butter and maybe some grape nuts or something. And if you end up sending me sweets I´m just gonna give them away cuz I´m sadly almost at my "6 months of sexy". Haha I don´t know if they said that back when you were in the mission but that´s the designated term for the last 6 months of the mission when you have to work out harder.

Ok well I´m pretty much out of time for now. I´ll try to give some better details next week. I love you all!! Keep being a great family,

Love,

Elder Boice

September 1, 2009

Dear Family,
Yep, I´m writing on a Tuesday, that´s because it´s transfer week again! Yeah, it always arrives so soon. So once again I´ll tell you all a little about my week and then I´ll tell you what´s gonna happen for transfers. :)

I guess not much has heppened this last week, it´s only been 6 days actually. One funny thing was that on Thursday we made a deal with the Mom of Hna.Verónica (who wrote the letter to Mom). She´s not a member and never listened to the missionaries, but somehow we got her to propose that if my companion made her brownies she would listen. She said it in joke, but we took her word on it and on Saturday we made her the brownies. We couldn´t teach her that day but she´s trapped now haha.

Another cool thing was that on Friday we randomly met up with the dad of the family we baptized at the house of an investigator. He was going around doing visits with another member so we taught a lesson with all of us and it was really cool to hear him bear his testimony.

On Sunday I gave a talk in sacrament meeting about "loving thy neighbor as thyself". It was from a talk in the Liahona and had a couple really great stories, but I guess I made a member cry because she felt bad because I read a poem about a guy that never makes time to visit his old friend around the street corner, and this member had the exact same case. The neighbor that lives around the street corner showed up towards the end of church crying because her daughter was sick. Anyway, then we taught primary which was fun of course. Our branch is about 80% kids.Then after church we went to the house of the hermana that showed up crying because her daughter is sick. Her daughter has pneumonia and her brother died of the same thing just a couple weeks ago. We went with the branch president and the 18year old 1st counselor and gave her a blessing. She´ll be fine.

Yesterday was pretty uneventful. The day before transfers is always wierd. It´s almost like Christmas Eve because of the anxiety haha. Ok so now that brings me to transfers. I´m gonna be leaving Federal and my companion will be staying. I´m going to a city called Pergamino. (Editor's note: The picture above is a photo I found online that shows Pergamino. Looks like a pretty big city compared to some of the small towns Coop has been serving in so far.) That means I´m traveling from the very northern end of the mission the far southern end. That means I have to pack like right now so that we can catch the bus to the city of Concordia tonight, and tomorrow I´ll probably be travelling for a good 12 hours or so. I´m excited though, I´m actually going to the exact same place my trainer finished his mission in. I´ll have to see if anyone remembers him haha. My new companion is latin, Elder Saavedra, but I don´t know where he´s from. I´m guessing Chile?

(Editor's note: I asked Cooper if he has received all of the boxes I sent him) Yeah, I think I´ve gotten everything you´ve sent me. The water filter has been really useful here because the water here is pretty bad and I don´t think you can find big bottles of water here. I got the books as well. Haha I loaned your "Whispers in the Leaves" book to the hermana that wrote you the letter because she asked me if I knew the church website for genealogy. I didn´t know so I lent her the book. She was really excited even though she can´t really read it. I haven´t read your books yet because I keep forgetting to ask permission from the President. We can only read books from the "missionary library" unless we ask permission.

Ok well have a great week everyone!! I´ll talk to you again next Wednesday and I´ll let you know how everything´s going! Love you all. Oh P.S. right now I´m making another DVD of pictures to send home.
Love,

Elder Boice

August 26, 2009

Dear family,
It´s been a good week. Right now I´m in the city of Concordia. (See the attached pictures.) We´ve been here since yesterday morning. We lose a lot of sleep in my area because at least once a week we have to travel here which means waking up at 3:45am and taking a 2 hour bus ride. I think this is the 3rd time in this last week that we´ve had to take this trip. I need a nap! :)

Let´s see what happened this week. Wednesday we found a cool guy named Rafael. We taught him the first lesson and he was really excited because he said he has a neice and nephew who are members and he can start reading the Book of Mormon and helping them to be active in church again.

Thursday I can´t remember anything really, Friday we travelled here to Concordia to do divisions and I went with a super funny/weird Peruvian Elder. It was fun and we had to kind of end a fight between a lady and her mom that she takes care of (just a fight of words don´t worry).

The next day when we got back to Federal (our city) we remembered that we had an activity in the church for el día del niño (kid´s day), yes it´s a holiday here. We had forgotten but we were supposed to help so we went and it was actually really good. (The sister that wrote Mom the letter is who organized everything.) I´ll have to send pictures. I´ve got some pretty funny pics of my comp because he basically is a 10-year-old kid trapped in an adult´s body so he was doing everything with the kids haha. It was a lot of fun. 40 kids came, but only half went to church the next day.

Sunday was pretty normal, they assigned me a talk for next Sunday. Monday was actually a pretty rough day. I don´t know why but it was just one of those days where EVERYONE rejects you or isn´t home.Anyway so then yesterday morning we came up to Concordia again and we did divisions with the zone leaders. It was pretty fun. We just taught a new convert and a less-active family.

And that brings me to today. Pday! We played soccer today and like always the latins play way better than the "yankees". I´m still learning the rules haha. Well so that was my week wrapped up. So school already started again!? And Brad is starting seminary and high school?! What in the world?! When did this happen? Where does the time go?

Well I´m glad it sounds like Mom and Dad you had a great time in Puerto Rico, and Mom, out of all those foods you mentioned I don´t think they have any of it here. There are 3 main food groups in Argentina: oil, noodles, and meat. Ok well have a great week everyone! Have fun starting a new school year!! Chao.
Love,

Elder Boice

August 19, 2009

Hi Family,
We had a good week. Sounds like Mom and Dad you are having a good time in Puerto Rico. I guess the summers almost ending huh.

Kind of funny, today I realized we went just about the whole winter taking cold showers. Well a couple of months at least. We had an electric water heater for a week but then it broke. Now it´s kind of starting to warm up outside so the cold showers aren´t so bad.

This last week the weather was really weird. There was a couple of days where it got HOT! We were out in short-sleeve shirts. Then Sunday morning we walked to church in the heat, and when we walked outside after church it was cold again. Then next thing you know a couple hours later it started raining and the rain turned into hail the size of marbles. Weird...

So anyway, yeah it was a pretty normal week I guess. One notable thing I just remembered is on Saturday I saw 2 carpinchos!!! That was the first time I had ever seen one so it was kind of a shock. It was like seeing a giant hampster about the size of a dog. (I don´t know what carpincho is in english sorry). A weird animal that doesn´t exist in the states I don´t think. (Editor's note: the picture above is of a family of carpinchos. Wierd and cute!)

Well one thing actually that was really cool was the last couple days. We´ve changed how we teach a little bit and now we ALWAYS challenge everyone to be baptized. It´s suprised me and I think our faith has grown because the last 2 days we´ve commited four people to be baptized, and one of them is a catholic school teacher.

I´m really excited to keep finding and teaching new people. One thing I really like about this province of Argentina (Entre Rios) is that it´s easier to get into people´s homes to teach them because it´s more rural and calm I guess.

Anyway, I can´t really think of anything else to say about the week right now. Sooo, I guess I´ll end here. I hope you all have a great week! I love you and I´ll write again next week! Chao!
Love,

Elder Boice

August 12, 2009

Dear Family,
I hope everyone´s had a great past week. We sure had a good one here in Federal, Argentina. (side note: my companion says his family looked for Federal on GoogleEarth but it´s not there cuz it´s too small. I thought that was funny. See if you can find it.) haha

Well this computer is really slow so I haven´t been able to look at the emails you sent me this week yet, so I´m just gonna start writing about my week while I wait for them to open.This last Friday we went to the wedding of a family we´ve been teaching and then on Saturday the family was baptized! Well 3 were baptized, the parents and one of the daughters.

The baptism went really well, my companion baptized them and the Relief Society made a couple cakes and we made some brownies for after the baptism. It´s a really cool family so it was really great to see them baptized. On Sunday they were confirmed, and I did one of the confirmations, which was the first time I´ve done that so that was a cool experience.

We had a good experience on Sunday night as well. When we had planned the day the night before we decided to just knock doors all Sunday night. I felt like we should go to a certain part on the map, so that´s where we went, and started knocking. Out of the 3rd house we knocked came a really nice lady and we asked her if she had talked to the missionaries before. She told us that she was catholic but that her dad was the branch president here in Federal a long time ago. She said that he must have sent us to her house because the day after was the anniversary of his death (I don´t know how many years ago).

So anyway, she talked to us about that for a while and then asked us really who sent us to her house. We told her we just had felt like we were supposed to go to that part of the city. “What a bunch of coincidences,” she said. She works out of town so she´s hardly ever in her house. Well so even after all that we couldn´t make an appointment with her but she said she´s gonna come by the church so we´ll see.

Let´s see, then yesterday we travelled up to the city of Concordia early in the morning to have a district meeting and do a baptismal interview. The lady I interviewed was really….. different. She was funny because she comes from the kind of religion that shouts and stuff a lot. She was really cool, but I found out she needs to stop smoking. She was so fed up with smoking and all the problems that come with it that she gave me her cigarretes and ash tray to throw away for her. If she quits smoking this week she´ll be baptized next week. I think she´ll do it.

Well so right now I´m looking at the pictures of the martial arts graduation ceremony. Way cool, and I´m really glad that letter from the member here got to you. That was really nice of her. (Editor's note: An Argentine lady named Veronica who is really impressed with Cooper wrote me an amazing letter, thanking me for raising such a wonderful son!) We´ve been teaching a lady that works in her house with her. That lady isn´t doing so great right now when it comes to getting baptized, but yeah the hermana Verónica is really cool and helps out a lot. She´s pretty young, like 29 or something I think. And yeah she speaks a little bittle of english. The basic stuff they teach in school here as well as some random words that the elders have taught her, haha. She´s really great though and I´m sure she would appreciate it.

The other day she wanted help because she has to plan an activity for the primary for el día del niño. I told her I couldn´t really think of anything good but that you wrote a whole book about things like that. And she said What your moms famous!? Maybe you could even send her the book even though its in english, haha.

Well so it looks like Brad and Dad are pretty much studs. (Editor's note: they both just received their green belt in Roshindo last week.) Hey so you´re going to Puerto Rico mom and dad? Have a great time, I bet it´ll be lots of fun.

Ok well that just about brings me to the end of this week's letter. I love you family! I´ll try to send a pic of the baptism from this last week. (Editor's note: it's the picture shown at the beginning of this letter.)

Love,

Elder Boice

August 5, 2009

Hey family,

Sounds like everyone had a fun cabin trip. :) Right now I´m looking at a bunch of pictures that dad sent me from the cabin. It´s taking super long to open the pictures cuz I´m on a way slow computer, so I´m gonna write about my week while I wait for the pictures to open up one by one.

Let´s see, there´s a few people we started to teach this week. Our branch president came by our house one night because he had found some people that wanted us to teach them. The first person is the nephew of our branch president. He´s 8 years old but his parents are less-active so they want us to teach him before he gets baptized.

The other person that wanted us to teach her is a lady named Cecilia. We had already taught her before, but she didn´t show too much interest until now. There´s a family in our area who´s 19 year old son Diego went to Buenos Aires for a couple months and recently came back with her. She´s like 30 and has 5 kids, so it´s kinda weird. Needless to say they have lots of problems and it just got to the point where they both want to change. It´s a really sad situation because this lady just seems trapped. So we´ll see what happens, but I really like teaching them just because the gospel changes people, and if they let themselves change it´s gonna be a really big change.

Let´s see. On Sunday we talked to the father of a family that won´t let his children get baptized. If you looked up stumbling block in the dictionary I´m pretty sure you´d find his picture in there. He said as long as he is alive and walking upon the earth his children won´t be baptized in the church because they have to follow the religion they were born into. Oh well... It was an interesting experience though. I´ve met so many stubborn and hard-hearted people on my mission, I just don´t understand it.

Well so then yesterday we had a zone conference. It was really good, one of my favorites actually. I started feeling kind of sick afterwards, I think I must have eaten something bad for lunch, and so I decided to stay in the zone leaders´ apartment that night (we were in a different city about 2 hours away). So I just kind of layed there on a mattress for a few hours and then at night I ended up throwing up. Gross. I felt way better after that though, haha. I felt really bad though, because out of ALL the places I could have thrown up, it HAD to be like the one place in all of Argentina that has a carpet floor. Their apartment has somewhat of a carpet floor, and I´m not joking it may be the only carpet I´ve seen in all of Argentina besides in the mission home. So anyway that was a bummer.

But so this morning we traveled back to our city and I feel fine now. I don´t think I was sick I think I just ate something bad. Luckily it happened yesterday though because today´s P-day so we didn´t lose any time to work. Yep so now we´re finishing up P-day.

Oh I got some mail at the zone conference. Some from Mom and from Tracey and Tanner. Gracias! It sounds like they´re all doing well. Sounds like Tanner is learning spanish really well. I´m sure he´ll be more prepared to learn spanish than I was if he serves a spanish-speaking mission.

Oh and mom asked me how we wash our clothes here so I guess I´ll answer that.Basically I use a plastic bucket that used to be a trash can. I cleaned it out so I could wash in it. I put my clothes in the bucket, boil some water, pour detergent into the bucket with the clothes, pour in some more water, mix it around a little bit, then leave it there to sit. I never find time to actually wash a bunch of clothes, so I usually end up rinsing some out every night and hanging it up to dry for the next day. In order to hang our clothes up to dry we just put the clothes on hangers and hang them from the window curtains.

Yep thats pretty much it. Ok well I´m out of time now, but I finished looking at all the pictures, thanks dad! Have a great week everyone! I love you all!
Love,Elder Boice

July 29, 2009

Hey family,
So it sounds like everyone´s at the cabin right now? Cool, I hope everyone has fun. Fishing? Roasting marshmellows over the campfire? Horseback riding? A parade filled with saltwater taffey? Tons of kids running around? I hope everyone has a great time as always. I have lots of good memories from the cabin.

Well so I´m thinking back on the week trying to remember what happened. I´ll start out with a funny story: We wash our clothes by hand in this area. My companion the other night had a funny experience. We usually let our clothes soak over night or over a period of days in a bucket and we rinse the clothes out as the days go by just because we can never find time to just wash. Usually we wash clothes at night when we get back to the house. So my companion finished rinsing the last clothes he had in his bucket, and he poured out the dirty water into the sink, and what do you know! A stiff mouse came falling out and landed in the sink. I was in the other room so I came running when I heard "Noooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!"Haha

Let´s see. We had a pretty good week actually, even if my companion was scarred from the mouse incident. One really cool thing is we got a reference of a family to teach. It´s a family of 16 people. One of the daughters is a member with her family, but her other 13 brothers and sisters aren´t members. Some of them already want to be baptized but their dad won´t let them. I don´t know why that always happens in this area. I think this is like the 4th case of a parent that refuses to let their kid get baptized. But anyway, it´s a HUGE family, and they all live in the same tiny house. SO many kids running around.Besides that I can´t really think of a lot.

Oh yeah and for mom, there´s a member in our area that wrote you a letter, and so I mailed it for her. Let me know if you get it, cuz I still don´t know what it says. Oh also right now I´m making a DVD of pictures to send you, I don´t know when. I can´t really think of anything else to tell about this week. Last night a member family called to have us come over to give a blessing of health. That was cool I guess and doesn´t happen too often. The dad is the 2nd counselor but we had to help him out because he wasn´t really sure how to give a blessing. I can´t remember how much I´ve said about the branch here. There´s only 3 priesthood holders in the city (active that is), and they´re the branch president and his 2 counselors. The 1st counselor is actually only 18 years old, Pretty cool.

I really like being in this area where the church is so small. It´s lots of fun even though it can be hard to get things going for lack of active members. Well ok that´s all for this week. I love you all and I hope you all have a great week and a great time at the cabin!!
Love,

Elder Boice

July 22, 2009

Hey family,

Hope everyone had a good week. That email you sent about the adventure cruise with guns was pretty funny. My comp and I both got a good laugh.

Well so today we got transfers (that´s why I´m writing on a Tuesday) but everything is staying the same so no news there. (Editor's note: attached is a picture of his current district. Cooper says Argentines think it's funny when Americans do the "thumbs up" sign, so I noticed that Cooper does that in almost every picture.)

I´m excited that I get to stay here though. We should have a really good transfer these next 6 weeks. Besides baptizing we´re gonna be getting in better shape and my comp is gonna improve his spanish a lot (we really need to be speaking more spanish when it´s just the 2 of us.)

But I guess I´ll catch you up on the last couple weeks. There´s a couple cool stories I don´t think I mentioned cuz I was hurried when I emailed last week. The first thing was the week before last. Just a small thing but I thought it was cool. When we go out I never bring DVDs with me but one day right before we left I felt like I should grab the DVD of the Restoration. So I grabbed it, put it in my bag, and we went. That night we went by a less active lady we hadn´t visited before, and we shared a message with her and right before we left she asked us if we had a DVD from the church we could bring her to watch with the rest of her family. I said Yeah here it is right here. I think I was more surprised than she was that I had it with me haha.

Then this last week we had a good experience. I think it was last Friday night. Basically everything we had planned fell through and we had an extra hour the last hour of the night. (That doesn´t happen much) so we decided to just knock some houses. And the 3rd or 4th house when the door opened up they looked really excited to see us and asked us if we were looking for Flabia. “Flabia? No but we´d love to meet her”. :) So the lady came out and it turns out she is a member but I had never seen her in church before. She told us that she was really happy because she really needed us to come by.

This Sunday she came to church and ended up bearing her testimony so we got the full story. Basically we showed up at the perfect time when she really needed help from the church and didn´t know what to do. Apparently earlier that day her mom had said "How weird, its been a long time that the Elders haven´t come", and she told her Mom, (Dentro de un ratito van a andar) "They´ll come by in a little bit." So when we got there we ended up giving 2 blessings to the little sisters of this Sister. Good experience.

Well and besides that, this last week I finished the Book of Mormon for the 3rd time in spanish and I had a guy tell me he couldn´t tell by my accent that I was from outside. YAY!! first time that´s happened, haha.

Ok well that´s all for this week. I love you all, talk to you again next Wednesday. Chao!
Love,

Elder Boice