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