The Great Argentine Mouse Hunt 4/28/09

Hey Fam!,

Another great week in Rosario. And yep today is transfers. Yay! First I´ll tell you about the week though.

First of all on Tuesday we found and taught a really great lady. She had already had a really good experience that she told us about. When she was about 17 years old she was really sick and people thought she might die. And one day she was laying in bed sleeping and she had a dream that Christ was leading her by the hand and they were going over rocks and through clean and dirty water and things like that. She had never had a dream like that before, but a knock on the door woke her up from her dream. She wasn´t going to answer it, but there were 2 young guys with white shirts and ties outside and so she let them in just because of the dream that she had had. She listened to the missionaries for a while but stopped listening because she got offended because they told her that her infant baptism in the Catholic church didn´t really mean anything.

Well anyway, years later she´s got a husband and kids and my comp and I come in to the story. We left her a Book of Mormon and yesterday she told us that she read and prayed and knows it´s true. She wants to be baptized as well but wants to be more prepared first. This is just the beginning of the story so I´ll let you know more as it happens. But for now it seems like she´s just a really great lady!

Oh and my comp and I thought it was funny because the day after we came the testigos de Jehová (Jehovah's Witnesses) showed up too. Kind of reminded us of the parable of the wheat and the tares haha.

Ok so on Wednesday we had a special Zone Conference and Elder Bowen from the Seventy came and spoke to us. And it was AMAZING! Really it was super good. Basically focused on obedience, faith and knowing who we are.

Besides that, we have a baptism this Saturday yay! I´ll send pictures after. And also for the transfers I just found out I´m gonna be training this transfer! Cool. I´m not sure if he´s American or latin so I´ll let you know next week about that as well. So I´m excited. Tomorrow I go to pick up my hijito (little son) from the misson home.

There was a mouse in our apartment that we couldn´t kill, and so I made a trap (remember when I went and spent a week learning this stuff in the mountains? Haha I knew it would be good for something.) So I´m gonna send a picture of the trap and the mouse that it caught lol. (Editor's note: Cooper didn't mention what they did with the mouse after they caught it. I'm almost afraid to ask.)

Have a great week everyone! Thanks for all your support! Oh here´s something that I learned this week: That the greatest miracle seen in mission work is the change seen in individual people. I love you all! besitos (little kisses)

Love,

Elder Boice

April 20, 2009

Hey family,
Everythings going well here in Argentina like always. I hear things are pretty bad up there in the States, as far as unemployment goes. Another Elder told me in California theres like 12% unemployment. Well what do you know the prophet and apostles were right again.

First of all that´s super cool, Mom, that your cousin Emily is getting baptized! YeaH!! Good news is always nice to hear.

Well I´ll tell you all a little about my week. Let´s see, on Monday we taught a family that has a LOT of problems. Man I mean seriously. It´s really hard for people to find work down here too and so the dad of this family is just really worried about getting food for his family to eat. Situations like that are hard. I guess you just say the same things that they said in General conference. Faith. Obedience.

On Tuesday we had our last district meeting for the transfer. I´ll send you a pic of the district. Wednesday was a good day I guess. Lots of walking and looking for inactive families. I´ve learned that every inactive family has the same reason for being inactive. They´re prideful and were offended for some dumb thing. Ok I´m sure not EVERYONE has that reason…

On Thursday we did our planning for the week, but there was one notable event. We were walking on the trail by the street at night and I saw something in the trail and stopped. It was moving slowly across the trail, and it was a HUGE tarantula! Which I had never seen before, well just hangin out in the wild I mean. That thing was almost the size of my hand, and my comp was super freaked out, cuz I told him that tarantulas never travel alone hahaha. I really have no idea but it seemed like a good thing to say.

On Friday I did divisions with an Elder that has like a year and 7 months, and we had a really successful day. We found a lot of really cool people and were able to teach like 4 lessons. On Saturday we had a good day back in my area. We found a cool little area next to the river. There are a ton of little houses built on the slopes next to the river, all with stairs to get to them. That was fun just cuz we had no idea there were people living there, and we´re going back tomorrow to teach there.

Also that night we brought Juan, one of our investigators, to a baptism in a different area. It was for a 9 year old girl, oh yeah I interviewed her on Friday, she´s really cool.

And then yesterday, Sunday, was a great day. I saw lots of answers to fasting, but I´ll tell you about that next week! I love you all!!!
Peace out,

Love,

your favorite Elder,

Elder Boice

April 13, 2009

Hey Family,

Well it was another week in Argentina. Pretty normal. I´m not really sure what to talk about. The mission wants us to be careful of getting dengue from mosquitos, I did divisions with one of the zone leaders which was fun, we had a district meeting on obedience cuz it´s kind of a problem with a couple of the elders in my district, we ate an asado (grilled steak) which was good.

The week was all just looking for people to teach and teaching. A few of our investigators fell including a great family which was really dissapointing. So we´ve got to try to pick them back up again.

Last night in our area we did a "choque de fuerza" (missionary blitz) in our area. All the missionaries in the zone worked in our area for a couple hours last night. Theres 16 in total, so we organized it so that every companionship just went looking for member families to get references instead of knocking doors or contacting in the street. It went pretty well.

I can´t think of a really stand out story from the week. I guess something funny would be last night when we were looking for a member family. We clapped in front of the house and could see everyone inside through the windows, and a little kid peeked his head out of the door/curtain "Everyones busy...uh, I mean, uh, no one´s home." Haha things like that happen a lot.

I don´t know why the parents always make their kids the ones that have to lie. Sometimes we talk to the kid about what God said about liars, but we just asked him to go get his mom and he said "ok!" Last night I was with an Elder that is going home in a couple weeks and it was kinda funny cuz we started talking about how there´s only about 5 different things you hear at every door.

Well anyway it was a good week overall. Even though there weren´t any huge events that happened there are still always the little miracles that happen every day in the mission. Have a great week everyone! I´ll talk to you next week, love you all.
Love,

Elder Boice

April 6, 2009

Dear family,
Hey! I hope everyone´s alright and things are all good in Las Vegas. I´ll give you an update on how my week went.

On Tuesday I did divisions so I spent the day in a different area. It was fun because the Elder I was with was an Elder that I was with in the MTC. It´s always fun being with him but unfortunately we didn´t get in a single door all day, (except for a member who gave us lunch).

On Wednesday we were able to teach a few good lessons to a few good people, so it was a really good day.

We´re teaching a small little family and on Thursday the mom said “I want to get baptized, I´m getting baptized whether my husband wants to or not.” That was cool, but obviously we want her to be able to be baptized WITH her husband. They´re actually not married yet but we´re working on that too. She came to general conference on Sunday with 2 of her kids so that was great. :)

Friday was really fun because we had a special zone conference. Our zone went to the mission home early Friday morning and we spent the day learning how to be better missionaries as well as playing fun games and things learning teamwork and how to be more united. We even watched the movie Remember the Titans. woohoo that´s the first non-church movie I´ve seen in a year haha.

We spent the night in the mission home and the next day we learned some more as well as had interviews. The president has a way of just making you feel great after an interview with him which I love.Right after that we went to General Conference and then after all the sessions at about 11 at night we headed home.

On Sunday we went to conference again but this time we were able to bring some investigators. We went with a lady named Liliana and 2 of her little kids, and it went really well. That family is a miracle that we found them because they basically live out in the middle of nowhere. The only reason we knocked their door was because we were super lost and that house was the only one around.

One of my favorite parts of general conference here is that in between sessions on Sunday everyone just went outside or into rooms and pulled out their "mate" and random snacks and just hung out and chatted waiting for the last session.Yep so that was my week here in Argentina. It was a good one. I hope all of you enjoyed general conference!

Sounds like you have a busy week. The mission is always really busy and tiring but I think I´m eventually gonna have to admit it and accept that there´s no breaks after the mission either. I loved conference. I think my favorite talk was Elder Holland´s about the Atonement and President Monson´s talk about the little german lady who had to dig her children´s graves with a spoon. Crazy huh.

I actually forgot Easter was coming up. Oh and yes at the end of my mission we get to go to the Buenos Aires temple. I´m pretty sure at least. Oh and don´t worry about a new Ipod. That would be really expensive and I really haven´t listened that much to mine in the mission. There´s just plenty of other Elders with good music. Last transfer my Peruvian comp would listen a lot to my Ipod and he found songs on there I had never even heard before.

Lately I´ve just been writing in my journal Sunday mornings, cuz there just isn´t time any other time. At night we come to the apartment at 9:00 or 9:30, and we go to sleep by 10:30. In that time we have to do a half hour of planning, get ready to go to bed, and I have to make phone calls and collect dats from everybody. Thats also our time for dinner, but I already decided theres no time for dinner now, so I think the next dinner I eat might be in the states. Anyway, with all that it´s been really hard to write in the journal :(

Thanks for everything mom and for being so supportive. You´re definitely my number 1 fan . I love you too, thanks for being such a great mom. I´ll be sure to give you a better thanks later if I have a kid that goes on a mission someday. (so that I´ll understand better)

Alright I love you all and I´ll talk to you next week.

¡Chau!
Love,

Elder Boice