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