CHRISTmas week 2009

Hey fam,


It´s been a pretty fun week. Normally I would be writing on Wednesday, but tomorrow my companion and I have to spend the day in Rosario, so we´re writing today!

I guess I´ll tell you a little about my week, starting from Christmas Eve. In the morning my companion and I did a baptismal interview for a 17-year-old girl. She already has 2 kids, but that´s not too unusual in Argentina. Actually just about a month and a half ago I interviewed a different 17-year-old girl with 2 kids. She got baptized on Saturday, the day after Christmas :)

We didn´t really do too much on Christmas Eve. We had a meeting together with the zone and then everyone was supposed to go to their appointments if they had them and then just go back to their house/apartment early and clean (to avoid problems).

In Argentina we can´t really go around and sing or knock doors on Christmas Eve because missionaries would probably get attacked by drunk people.

On Christmas, all the missionaries got together as a zone, and we did our studies all together (my comp and I made a jeopardy game for the zone), then we played soccer for a while, we watched the movie "The Grinch" (we had to get permission beforehand), and then we ate empanadas for lunch. We played some funny games together with the zone while people called their families. We were in the church and there were only 2 phones so we had to take turns. Also an Elder in our zone did a magic show for us and it was really pretty good. There was a little girl in one of the branches here that died on Christmas Eve so we found out during the day that they were going to have the funeral there at the church on Christmas in the afternoon. The reason I called so late is because we had to clean up to get ready for that and then my companion and I had to find another phone somewhere else.

But I sure enjoyed talking to everyone! Sorry I called in a bad moment, oh well, it was fun getting to talk to everyone individually though. Yeah we were only supposed to talk for 40 minutes and so I bought a phone card that supposedly would last about 40 minutes, so that´s why it cut out without much warning.

Well Saturday was a pretty normal day. Sunday was different, because our branch president was out of town. So I had to teach priesthood, direct sacrament meeting, give a talk, and like always my companion and I do the tithing as well. It was fun though.

Yesterday we had another lesson with Romina. She still doesn´t know if she has received an answer from God or felt the Spirit, even though when we taught her she looked like she was about to cry. She says she just feels peace and so she doesn´t know if the church is true yet. She did try to fast last week, but she got to hungry and didn´t make it, haha. I guess it might be hard for her. She´s never fasted before and she´s a pretty skinny girl. We´ll see what happens. She still seems like she´s so close...

Ok well that´s all for this week. Next week I´ll be writing on Tuesday again because of transfers. I love you all!, and thanks Dad for sending all the pictures of Christmas!

Love,

Elder Boice

Animoto.com

Merry CHRISTmas!

(Editor's note:  YAY!  Coop is going to call home on Christmas day!)

Hey fam,


We´ve had a good week down here. I´ll start with a funny story. So the last time I wrote I think I mentioned that we had gone about a week without water. Well the day after I wrote we got the water fixed, so I could finally take a shower. But of course, while I was showering the electricity AND water went off. At the exact moment that I was completely covered in soap, haha. Oh well, so I just had to dry off and wait a few more days until we got everything fixed and then I got to finish my shower.

Well so anyway, every funny story should be followed by something spiritual. Our investigator Romina is progressing really well. She is one of those incredibly few people I´ve met on the mission that actually UNDERSTAND the message we share and what it means if it´s true. She still hasn´t received an answer through prayer to know that it´s true. But she´s been fasting since yesterday and she probably ended her fast a few hours ago. We´re going by later today to see if she´s received an answer to her prayers yet. :D

This monday I did divisions with a Chilean elder in our zone. It was a lot of fun and we were able to teach a lot. (In my opinion the Chileans are the funnest latins to be with)

Yesterday was a pretty weird day. In the morning, the mission home called us and told us that a mini-missionary (a local serving as a missionary for 6 weeks) was heading back home to our area. The problem was that he hadn´t been released from being a missionary yet. So we travelled by bus to the city he lives in in order to find him before he visited too many girls by himself as a missionary haha. He was fine, but we had to hang out with him all day until the district president here could release him at night. It was a pretty fun day and we found a pretty cool guy that we taught.

Well that´s pretty much it for this week. Talk to you all in 2 days :)


love,

Elder Boice

December 16, 2009

Hey family,


I´ve got to run so there's not much time to write.

This last week we´ve gone without running water. It´s been a few days since I last showered haha. A few highlights of the week were: We taught a lady in english. She was an english teacher and talks ok. It was way fun and the spirit was strong but she´s afraid to ask God because I think she felt that what we shared was true, but doesn´t want to change.

We traveled up to a different city on Monday and did some baptismal interviews. (Our zone is number 1 in the mission for baptisms this month so far, yeah!)

And yesterday we all travelled to another city to have interviews with the President. It was a great week, and interviews were great. We made a lot of good goals and plans with the zone.

Onward to victory!

I love you all and I´ll talk to you next Friday at 11:00!  (Editor's note:  YAY!!  Coop gets to call home on Christmas!)   PS I´ll still be writing next wednesday. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Boice

December 9, 2009

(Cooper with a companion and the Mission President and his wife.  I think Cooper must be the tallest person in the entire country of Argentina.  He's always the tallest guy in every picture he sends!)

Hey family,


Thanks for sending the pictures from Thanksgiving, they were really fun to see. P.S. Benjamin is huge now :O

Anyway it was a pretty dog-gone good week. Something cool that happened on Thursday is we were just walking through our area to get somewhere, and while we were passing by a house I felt like it was important for some reason and so I said to my companion "hey who lives there?", and he told me that there are a couple investigators that they had stopped going by a while ago and he had forgot about them. So we ended up talking with them and we made an appointment for another day.

Friday was a pretty slow day with lots of walking. Saturday was cool I guess just because we taught a really cool lady who can´t get baptized because she´s not married with the guy she´s living with. Apparently he used to hate us, but we were able to have a lesson with him as well which was big progress.

Sunday was funny. We were about to go back to our apartment at night but we wanted to finish our goal of contacts, and the last one to reach our goal ended up being super cool. It was a lady who knew how to speak english fairly well, and she had been in contact with missionaries doing english classes for years but noone had ever given her a Book of Mormon or taught her. She seems like she´s been prepared a lot, and she´s going through a tough time right now, so we´ll see what happens.

Anyways, Monday was a good day as well, we had a couple of fun lessons. We taught a guy that had an autoshop in the garage of his house, and so we taught him sitting on the siding of the oil pit with our legs hanging down. He was a nice guy but didn´t understand very well.

And then yesterday was Tuesday. We had a zone conference with over half the mission. It was a special Christmas zone conference and it was really fun and really spiritual as well. All the zones either sang songs or did Christmas skits that we had prepared beforehand and it was really great and turned out really well. We didn´t end up getting back to our city until about 11:00 at night because we had to travel to Rosario for the conference.

Today we played soccer together for preparation day in the morning and it was fun. I´m still pretty tired and I´m hoping there´ll be some time for a nap before P-day ends haha.

(Editor's note:  I sent Cooper a picture of his cousin, Tanner, in the hospital after his shoulder surgery.)
Aw man, what happened to Tanner? baseball?  (Editor's note: Yes!)


Hey I just really that Tanner and I both are named after old western occupations. The Tanner and the Cooper. When people ask me what my name is and I tell them Cooper, I either tell them I was named after the MiniCooper or I tell them that in spanish it would be Barrilero. Haha.
 
Ok well that´s all for now. I guess I´ll be calling home in a few weeks so that´ll be really fun but you´ll have to think of some questions for me and I´ll think of some for you so that I know what to talk about, haha.

Ok well I love you all a ton. I hope you all have a great week, watch out for the cold and I´ll watch out for the mosquitos!  (Editor's note:  It's summer in Argentina now!)

Love,

Elder Boice

December 2, 2009

Here is a picture of all of the Zone Leaders in Cooper's mission.  He's in the front row (3rd from the right)

Hi family,


Wow I can´t believe we´re already in December. We´ve made some plans and stuff for next year already and it looks super weird seing the numbers 2010. This year is going by at lightning speed.

But anyway, I´ll tell you about my amazing last week.

The last time I wrote was on Tuesday because of transfers. Well, later that day I started feeling pretty sick, and the next morning as well. I think that was the first time on the mission that I actually took some medicine. I had a fever and felt pretty crappy but the next day after I took some medicine I felt better and was able to travel to my new area.  Luckily I only get sick on P-days of transfer days so I have yet to miss a day of work haha.

So yep, I arrived fine on Wednesday and met my new companion Elder Koch (pronounced Elder Cook). Something funny that happened that day was that we went and got food and when we got to our house we were inside and my companion thought there was a mosquito on the back of his neck so he brushed it off. I looked and saw him brush a giant spider off his neck onto his shoulder. So I was nice enough not to tell him what it was until I had brushed it off his back for him and he saw it on the floor. Haha so that was my experience from the first night that I was here.

The next day we did our weekly and monthly planning and did 4 baptismal interviews for some of the elders in our zone. We interviewed a couple and some little girls and they were all pretty cool.

Friday was a really cool day. It was really rainy, but we started off the day right. In our companionship study we decided to read 3 Nephi 11 together (when Christ comes to the Americas), and then to pray about it together and ask if the Book of Mormon is true. The Spirit testified as we read and very strongly as we asked that indeed the Book of Mormon is true. And so after that we went through all the teaching records of old investigators that we have. I felt really good about one name so I wrote the name and address in my agenda and then we went out to work.

We have to travel by bus for about 20 minutes to get to our area that we work in, so we travelled there and went to a few appointments that we had set up. All our appointments failed us, so after the last one I told my companion we could go by the name I had written down in my agenda. We looked at the address and it happened to be the exact house we were standing in front of. We had an appointment with the family that lives there but they told us they were busy just a minute ago, and so my companion told me I must have the wrong name written down cuz a different family lives there. But we had seen another lady behind the house so we went and asked her if she was the person we were looking for and she said yes. So we pulled some chairs and started teaching her behind her house and then a couple minutes later the husband got home and so we all went inside and taught the Restoration.

They turned out to be a great family and they´re fairly new to the city. The husband said that he used to go to church but they moved and he stopped going, and he was just waiting for God to call him to go back again. We said guess what, This is that day! And he said yep looks like it. Haha, so they turned out to be a really cool family and we were able to testify to them that we had just read in the Book of Mormon and asked if it was true that morning, and that we had received an answer, and we invited them to do the same. We´ll find out tomorrow if they´ve done so. :)

Saturday and Sunday were normal days I guess, just with lots of rain, and I forgot my rain jacket and umbrella in my last area so that stunk but I found a rain jacket hidden away in a bag in my new house here, yay!

So yep, I´m out of time to write now, but Monday was Mission Council which was fun. We talked about all our goals and new plans in all of the zones.

Oh yeah! One more thing. Last night my last companion called me and told me that a guy we taught once this last transfer ended up murdering someone a couple of days ago and now he´s in hiding. We never were able to teach him a full lesson, but he seemed like a normal guy. How weird.

Ok well everyone have a great week, everything is going pretty well down here. We´re doing our best to have a white Christmas (baptize). So I hope everyone´s enjoying the Christmas season up there. Just so you know, Christmas is WAY cooler in the states!

(Editor's note:  I heard some reports of serious flooding in Argentina and read some letters from other missionaries down there who had to practically swim in the water to get around, so I asked Cooper if the rains were that bad where he was.  Here is his reply:)   No it´s not flooding where I am. When I was in Entre Rios a couple transfers ago I was close to the city of Concordia and it is flooded there, but the missionaries are fine. There´s definitely no missionaries that have had to swim as far as I know, haha. But this Monday all the zone leaders had our monthly meeting with President and he just told the elders up there to be careful, and apparently there´s problems with snakes coming because of the rain so to watch out for that too.  That does sound like fun though I wish I could be up there.
 
(Editor's note:  Cooper sent a box of cookies called "alfajores", along with some photos and letters.)  Yay! I´m glad the alfajores made it through.  The whole alfajor thing is pretty funny. All the Elders down here LOVE them and wonder why they don´t have them in the states. But then they eat a snickers and remember why.
love you all.

Love,

Elder Boice