February 23, 2009

Hey family,

Well it was a good week. It started off really well. I was able to do my first baptismal interview, which was really cool. It was a young couple, and it was really neat hearing about their conversion and the changes they´ve made.

Basically a couple months ago they were thinking about getting seperated and divorced, and they both smoked. And now after hearing the missionaries they´ve fixed everything up so they want to stay together now, and they´ve stopped smoking, and basically they´re just doing great. They got baptized this last Saturday and confirmed yesterday! If anyone is confused, these baptisms were in a different area in my district. I just got to do the interview. (Editor's note: Cooper is now a District Leader and so conducting baptismal interviews is one of his job functions.)

Let´s see, that was this last Tuesday, after we had interviews with the president. Interviews were really good too. One thing I really need to work on is using my time better, being more organized and planning better. I say my time but it´s really not mine...it's the Lord's.

We were able to teach a little bit this week but on Sunday it rained so only 11 people came to church. Also we were gonna do an activity on Saturday night, but the branch president who has the keys came an hour late. But thats ok cuz he was the only one that came. So we´re gonna have to learn to plan things better.That may sound a little depressing but that´s ok we´ll do better this week.

As for something interesting that happened...the only thing I can think of is a lady in church who started telling everyone how voices in her watch talk to her, and she meditated for a while about that, and realized that Christ said he is Alpha and Omega. And the brand of her watch is Omega. So he must have been talking about her watch. Don´t worry she´s pretty old so it was mostly cute, just a little bit worrying.

Well I hope everything is going well family, Brad sounds like he´s doing great with his boxing, but I want to know what everyone else is up to too. :)

Alright well talk to ya next week. ¡Que Dios los bendiga! (God bless you!) Have a good week. Disfrutenlón. (Enjoy it!)
Chaucito (A little good-bye)
Love,

Elder Boice

2/16/09

(Editor's note: Some of the missionaries were so sick and tired of wearing the same ties for 2 years that they started to burn them in their backyard. Cooper hasn't been out that long but he volunteered to do the job. Here's a picture of him torching one of the ties. He used bug spray with a match to create the torch effect. Makes a mama proud, eh?)

Hey family,

I hope everyone had a great week. It was a pretty good week here in Gualeguaychú. Carnaval is still going strong here since it´s the carnaval capital of Argentina. But its really not a big deal, it just means on Saturday nights we come back to the apartment a little early, cuz theres tons of crazys out in the streets.

So a couple of things that happened this last week were: We had a family home evening with some investigators, and now 2 out of 3 of them have prayed and gotten answers that the Book of Mormon and the church are true. So what could be better news than that right!?

Well, so now that these 2 girls want to get baptized, the grandma has come in to the scene. They live with their grandma. And the grandma, who´s “very religious” doesn´t want them to listen to us any more. Her own words were that her granddaughters were going to repent from listening to the mormon missionaries. We heard all this from the daughter of this grandmother, who was thrown out of her house when she got baptized.So it goes without saying that that was kind of a bummer when we heard that. We asked some other missionaries for advice, and one said “Este género con nada puede salir, sino con oración y ayuno ”. (Editor's note: This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting). That was kinda funny. But true so we fasted.

We passed by the house a couple of days ago to talk with them, and the grandmother came out really angry. We talked with her for a few minutes and hey what would you know she ended up laughing and smiling, and said we could come back another day, but that she would just listen. So this week we´re gonna go back and see if we can teach her this week.Also we found out that the mother of these 2 girls we´re teaching might be coming to live here and so the 2 girls would live with her again. It´s a complicated story, but it´s cool to see how God works behind the scenes. Because if these girls end up living with their real mom, it should be a lot easier to teach them and for them to get baptized. We definitely saw answers to prayer and fasting this week.

Another cool thing was we were able to give a blessing of health to the 2-year-old kid of an investigator. This little kid has been really sick and even more so recently, so it was kind of painful just seeing him because he was crying and and just really uncomfortable. But when we gave the blessing he was perfectly calm and relaxed and the mom even said she felt his fever go down as we gave the blessing. (he was sitting on his mom´s lap for the blessing). That was a really good experience, I love when we get to give blessings. Actually now that I think about it we gave 2 this last week.

But anyway that´s pretty much all the news for now. It was a good week, but you know what we´re gonna make this week better!! Good luck with everything you´re all doing. Talk to you next week. Hasta luegito familita.
Love,

Elder Boice

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hey Family,

I hope everyone had a great week. I just realized that Valentines Day is later this week! So Calvin and Bradley, I hope you don´t have too many valentines this year, remember you can only have one. And Bo, you probably have like 100 valentines so try not to break too many hearts ;) .Haha

We actually had a couple girls set to get baptized this Saturday. After we commited them to be baptized that day we realized that it would be valentines day. Lol that might have been a little awkward, us baptizing 2 young women on valentines day. But they didn´t make it to church yesterday so we´re gonna have to move their baptismal date back. So we´re gonna look on the positive side, that might have been kind of weird right? Lol

ok I´ll tell you a little of what went on this week. We had transfers which were a little crazy just cuz we´re in a really isolated spot from the mission out here. But my new comp, Elder Chacón, is from Peru. Not mexico, I was way off when I guessed! So it turns out I´m learning some Peruvian spanish instead of Mexican spanish.

He seems like a really good Elder, and he´s a pretty fun guy too. This morning he told me all about his house in Peru. It´s some kind of 3 story building, and his uncle raises fighting chickens on the top floor and trains them for battle hahaha. And that´s not a joke. He told me all about how his uncle raises and trains chickens, or roosters I guess, to fight. That´s illegal in the States by the way if anyone reading is wondering what I´m talking about.

But anyway, it was an ok week, just a lot of time was lost with the transfers and everything. We weren´t able to teach too much. :( Oh yeah, and we found out this week that algas, (no not nalgas :P) got into the water here in the city. (Editor's note: algas means algae, and nalgas means buttocks.) My comp told me what algas are, I forgot to look it up in the dictionary but I´m pretty sure it means algae. So I boiled a pot of water to purify it, but after it cooled down we looked at it and there was gross white stuff that had separated from the water when it boiled so we didnt drink it. Soooo, it´s back to drinking from the little water bottle filter I have. I don´t know I guess I shared that story just so everyone appreciates living in north america a little more :)

Ok well I gotta run family. Talk to ya next week!
Love,

Elder Boice

Deep Cooper

Editor's note: Today I updated Cooper's Facebook page for him since he's not supposed to play around on the Internet during his mission. This is the photo I used to change his profile picture. The sign Cooper is holding says "Danger! Deep Water"

While Cooper is serving a mission we are all seeing his soul become deepened as well!

He is currently serving in a border town on the edge of Argentina and Uruguay, between the deep waters.

We're so proud of him. Keep those letters coming! He loves hearing from all of you!

February 3, 2009

Hi family,

I hope everythings going well in Las Vegas and BYU and wherever else people might be this week. I´m super short on time to write so I´ll keep it quick. It rained a lot this week. We got completely soaked once so after that we got smart and started carrying our umbrellas. I know I know you´re probably thinking "wow genius!" Yep I thought it was a pretty good idea myself :) Hehe.

But we´ve been teaching a lot. We're teaching 2 girls in the house of a member, and now we´re teaching the boyfriend of one of the girls as well. They´re doing really well, but the problem is this week we´re gonna have to pass by the house of the grandma who will need to give permission for them to be baptized. I say the problem because she´s kind of anti-mormon. She threw her daughter out of the house when she was baptized. We´ll see how it goes.

Let´s see, that´s the week wrapped up. So I´ll tell you the new transfers now.I´m staying here in Gualeguaychú, but my companion is leaving, and an Elder named Elder Chacón is coming here as my new comp. We´re thinking he´s mexican but not sure. Thats just judging on his picture that we found haha. Also I´m the new district leader.Right now there´s another Elder hanging out here with us for a couple days because his companion finished the mission and went home a couple of days ago. So it´s kind of fun having a third Elder down here in our tiny apartment with us.Well that´s all the news today!

Today we´ll probably spend going around members houses so my comp can say goodbye to everyone tonight before he leaves. Everythings going well down here though. OH! a couple things I just remembered. Mom one thing that would be nice in my hump day package would be some nice real american steak seasoning. Random request but you can´t get that here. And one last thing, to Lauren who leaves to China in a few days, Good luck, take care and be safe!

Hey Mom, no you don´t need to send me money. I always have extra personal money with me, but I refuse to use it especially if it´s just cuz I wasn´t wise with my money. How else am I gonna learn? By the way I have plenty of money now, I think what happened is I had more money on my mission credit card last transfer but I didn´t know, so I thought I ran out. Now I have about $150 pesos extra cuz I thought I was broke the last couple weeks. Hehe :)

As for the water here. I always drank out of my filter water bottle until I got here. I´ve just been drinking from the tap here. It just kinda gets annoying cuz it gets really hard to squeeze the water through the filter, even though I put a new one in.

Also I don´t think there are any members that have food/water storage. Everyone just lives paycheck to paycheck you could say. Its really funny because everyone uses money right when they get it. So when everyone adds on to their houses, it takes years cuz they´ll buy the parts brick by brick as the months go by instead of saving and just doing it all at once. No one ever has a finished house here.

That's it for now.

I love you all!!
Love,

Elder Boice