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

July 15, 2009

Hey Family!

Sorry but I have NO time left to write today. I spent a lot of time writing Calvin, so at least he got a good letter this week lol. (Editor's note: This week is Calvin's birthday.)

But we had a really good week this last week. It was actually the first time in my mission that my comp and I acheived "The 9 Standards of Excellence" They´re basically just certain numbers of lessons and other things that the mission president put as a goal for the mission. When we started the week we put the goal to teach 50 lessons in the week, cuz I don´t think everyone has ever done it in our mission. We didn´t quite get to the 50 mark, (I think we ended with 24), but we ended up working (a fool) as they say here), and we got the standards of excellence. They put our pictures up in the weekly email that the mission sends us so that was cool I guess.

But anyway we´re doing well here, this sunday we´re going to have church again, so everythings getting back to normal after the swine flu scare.

Ok I gotta go, sorry for the short email this week,

I love you all!
Love,

Elder Boice

(Editor's note: Coop says the picture is just of a place he passed by and thought was funny.)

July 8, 2009

Hi Family!,
Thanks for the emails, I hope everything is well up in the land of Vegas. Argentina seems to be kind of falling apart right now. Ok well that´s kind of an exaggeration, but all the stuff going on IS kind of annoying, because it´s making the missionary work a little more difficult.

So I guess I´ll start telling you about my week starting at last Thursday. Well so because of the whole swine flu, last Thursday we found out that we had to buy 2 extra weeks of food just in case they ended up closing the supermarkets here.

On Friday we had a zone conference and interviews with the President, but we ended up just having the interviews and we cancelled the zone conference. Technically we probably could have gotten in trouble I guess because it´s illegal right now to have any kind of group gathering in closed spaces. That means most of the government stuff is all closed, nobody can have church, and lots of stores are either closing or just staying open a little bit less.

The bad thing about this is 1: No one can get baptized if noone can go to church! And 2: Our families we´re teaching can´t get married so everything´s getting pushed back!

Oh yeah but good news from Friday is that I got that package that you sent mom. And it is delicious! We made the peanut butter cookies the other night and we used the gravy as well because we made steak with mashed potatoes and gravy to celebrate the 4th of July!

That was pretty much how we celebrated, besides that on Saturday we taught a lesson to some kids that are sheep herders and so we read them the story of Ammon taking care of the sheep and cutting off arms . I figured we´d try to catch their attention with that since all they do is watch sheep and stuff on their farm.

Also on Saturday we bought our 2 weeks of extra food, and so we are LOADED with food now yay! On Sunday we went around to some members to bless the sacrament in their homes and on Monday we had a pretty good day and taught a lot.

Yesterday I came to a different area to do a few baptismal interviews. 2 passed, 1 didn´t, and the other had some problem so we couldn´t do the interview. I like doing the interviews though, I just hope I did it well so that it´s a special and uplifting experience for them, and not just some weird American asking them a bunch of questions.

So that brings me to today. We´re in the city of Concordia, about 2 hours away from our city, spending pday here because the places to do email in our city are closed. We played soccer with the elders in the zone this morning which was pretty fun. We´re gonna have to travel back to our city so I gotta go now. But I hope reading about my week wasn´t too boring and I hope you all have a great week this week!
Love,

Elder Boice

(Editor's note: Cooper told me what "capo" means since he said that in his last letter. In Argentina it means "stud". So, that pretty much makes Cooper an Elder Capo. Cooper the Capo...I like it!)

July 1, 2009

Hola querida familia,
How was everyone´s week? Sorry I´m writing pretty late today. We had to get permission to write this late but it´s because we spent all day moving from our old apartment to a new one. Which is actually a really cool little house. It´s even got a real shower head! ( But I think we´ll have to take it out, if we want to shower with warm water during the winter that is.)

Let´s see, this week I´m pretty sure pretty much most of what I have to tell about would be all the time we had to spend to get a new house. Lots of “missionary stuff” and not enough “missionary work”. We spent a lot of time finishing the contract, getting documents from the city, replacing and fixing a lot of stuff in the old apartment, getting electricity in the new apartment (which is a too long and too complicated process), and moving everything today. The good news is that when you´re a missionary living in Argentina, the actual move of all your stuff isn´t too dificult. Just a couple trips in a pickup truck with a little trailer/wagon thing on the back.

Besides that, we did have some highlights this week in the missionary work. Last Thursday we gave a blessing to a brother in the branch who was really sick. Those are always highlights for me for some reason. I really like giving blessings, and on top of that it was the first time my companion got to give one in Spanish. I remember doing that for the first time, not easy!! Haha.

Also the other day we went and taught a big family that lives on a little farm outside of town off to the side of the freeway. I think I´ve told you about them before... But anyway they need to get married. So we got another family of invesigators to come with us to teach them, because they are about to get married and baptized. So with the help of that family we taught a lesson on marriage and eternal families, and it went well I think. The mother of the family was supposed to go to do her marriage papers and stuff with the city this morning. So we´ll find out if she did it on Saturday when we go back.

Oh one more thing. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!! I promise I didn´t forget, but I realized I forgot to say that last p-day. It sounds like you had a great birthday though, (PS I liked dad´s present best) haha. (Editor's note: I got a bunch of weapon stuff...) So anyway, I hope you had a great 30th birthday. Women turn 30 every year right? (Editor's note: Yes, I just turned 30 years old.)

Oh I did have a question. You intrigued me when you mentioned the “cap and trade” bill. What is it?? Oh yeah and they cancelled all schools in Argentina for a month because of the swine flu I guess. That´s what I´ve been able to understand at least, we´re not too informed as missionaries. Although I have heard plenty about Michael Jackson dying, I guess they stay updated here only about the really important stuff like that, haha.

Ok well until next week family, Have a great one! I love you all and wish you all the best! I´m trying to send as many prayers your way as you´re sending mine!
Love,

Elder “capo” Boice (Editor's note: I have no idea what he means by "capo")