January 26, 2010

hey family,


I don´t have time to write. But we had a good week, we´re having fun working in the heat.

Good experience from the week: our family that has to quit smoking cried in our last lesson and told us that they had a talk together as a family about doing things right and keeping their commitments.

Bad experience from the week: I opened a bag of bread that I had bought, pulled a couple slices out, and realized that there was a cockroach sitting on my slice of bread. (it burrowed into the bag and through the loaf).

Ok gotta go but here are some pictures from our P-day today at the zoo.

Love you all!,

Elder Boice

(Editor's note: Cooper took a GREAT picture of this tiger!  EEK...he was close!)

January 20, 2010

Hi family,


I hope everyone´s had a good week up there. It´s gettin to be pretty hot down here. The weather in Santa Fe is pretty crazy. Super hot and humid then lots of rain. Then hot and humid again then more rain. They don´t have good drainage in Santa Fe so when it rains a lot it floods.

Well so lets see. We had a zone conference this last week. That was fun. I got to see my hijo (My greenie that I trained). He seems like he´s doing well and it was really fun talking to him. He taught me more Chilean sayings haha.

On Saturday we were going to have a baptism but it fell through because our investigator´s family moved that day so he couldn´t come. He´s gonna get baptized this Saturday (let´s hope).

On Sunday all the missionaries in our city came to our area to help us work. We call it a "choque de fuerza" and we all went out and taught some new people and contacted people in a park with a big stand of the plan of salvation that we found.

On monday it rained pretty hard. That was a lot of fun. I left my umbrella in my last area on accident so my comp and I got soaked. Argentines have a deep fear of the rain so it´s kind of fun to be the only people in the city out in the street.

All in all things have been going well. Our family that´s trying to quit smoking is doing well. They still haven´t quit but they´re progressing. We have a pack of their cigarrettes that we soaked in milk and we´re thinking about giving it back to them so that if they smoke they´ll never want to smoke again.   (Editor's note:  the signs Cooper made to help the family stop smoking say from left to right: "Just one causes harm", "Enough!", "Stop smoking already!")

We´re also teaching a couple that needs to get married so that the husband can get baptized. The concubine, I mean the wife, doesn´t want to get married yet because she has a disability and the government will stop giving her money if she gets married...

There´s also a lot of inactive or apostate members that we talked with this week.

Today was fun, we played soccer and some games together with the zone. I need to go write some letters now. I haven´t written Matt or Bryce or Max or Michael Montgomery for a while so I´m gonna try to write at least someone today.

Alright well I love you family. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Boice

January 13, 2010

Hey fam!,


Thanks, Dad, for sending the pics of the cabin and ice-skating. That was fun to see. I keep forgetting to bring my camera on P-day to make cds of the pictures and send some to you.  We´re only allowed to bring cameras around on P-days so the majority of the pictures are Pday pictures or activities/baptisms. The thing is that the pictures that I most want to take are of the villas (the more ghetto areas), but that´s the worst place to take a camera.  I´ll have to go to some dangerous villa on a P-day so that I can pull out my expensive camera and start taking pictures of everything. ;P just kidding, but seriously.


I´ll try and think of something good for a picture. Haha in my last area one of the Elder´s sisters was getting married so they wanted a picture of just him to make into a lifesized poster for the wedding picture. So he took a picture of himself without a shirt, just wearing a pink tie, so you could see his missionary tan and his nice big mission gut that he stuck out for the picture. It was pretty funny.  But don´t worry I wont do that I promise ;)

Ok well I don´t have much time to write. But it´s been a fun week. My new area is basically part poor and part rich. Well actually we´re working in 2 areas so we have 2 wards and lots to work with. The ward we´re really asigned to has about 20 people on Sunday. And yes it´s a ward.

Yeah I was in Santa Fe before! But in a different area. The fun thing is that we share the stake center with the branch I was in before so I got to see everyone from my old branch on sunday, and they said "you came back!" haha. What made me most happy was that I saw my first convert from the mission. His name is Gonzalo, and he and his wife are preparing to go to the temple. He´s doing great :)


We spend a good couple days knocking in the wealthier part of the area (cuz that´s what the bishop wants) but nobody let us in, even one day when it was pouring rain and cold. So anyway I think we´re just gonna knock in the poor area where people´s hearts aren´t so hardened and we´ll only work with references in the wealthy area. I also liked Mom´s ideas of speaking at events or doing an interview with the newspaper etc.

Well we have a couple people that are pretty close to baptism. One is gonna get baptized this Saturday. He´s a pretty young guy, and he has to move the day of his baptism so we won´t get to keep him. Oh well haha. Another guy could totally get baptized but he´s doesn´t want to get married in order to do so so we´ll see about him. And there´s another family that´s doing really well. Only one of them came to church this last Sunday, but the rest should be coming this Sunday. We found out they need to quit smoking, so this morning we taught them how to quit smoking and we took all their cigarretes with us haha. The church has a really good plan to quit smoking and so we started them this morning :) It was fun.

Ok well I need to head out. Our apartment is a wreck so since today is Pday we´re gonna do some more cleaning on it.

Love you family! The church is true and I love the mission, talk to you next week.


Love,

Elder Boice

Happy New Year 2010!

(Editor's note: Is that rolled up bologna on the pizza?  Disgusting!)

Hi family,


It´s been a good week and we got new transfers and it looks like I´m leaving again. I´ll update you on how my week went first.

Last Tuesday we taught a way good family and another dog ripped my pants, so I used a stapler to repair my pants for the moment (it was the only thing I could find). My comp and I did an activity for the ward and eeryone had a lot of fun and laughed a lot.

On Wednesday we had mission council. It was fun like always and there were some good ideas there. Something funny was that that morning we had to wake up at 3:00am in order to travel to Rosario, but when we got up there was no power in the house so we had to shower and get ready in the dark with flashlights.

For new years eve we just went to bed like always, so I didn´t see any fireworks. And on New Years Day it was P-day so we travelled with all the zone to the church in my area and we played volleyball and had a lot of fun.

Saturday was a great day. We had a lesson with Romina, we watched a church video and then talked about baptism and it was definitely one of the most spiritual lessons on my mission. Romina was balling, and we talked about the Spirit, because she always says that she doesn´t feel anything. So we pretty much called her bluff when she was crying her eyes out. I asked her to be baptized about 7 times because she was crying and would think and not respond, or she would say stuff like "well what if it´s not the right choice?" Anyway we answered all her doubts and she didn´t have any excuse not to get bapized, but then she told us that she was leaving on vacation and wouldn´t be back until the 17th, so I think she´s gonna get baptized the Saturday after she gets back.

We had another really good lesson yesterday with a family that we started teaching. The family accepted last week to get baptized on the 23rd of January, and yesterday we were teaching the mom and some of her kids in a member´s house and she started crying in the lesson too, and said she wants to be baptized.

Well so it was a great week, lots of crying, and lots of people that are gonna get baptized in January. And so last night, of course I found out that I´m leaving the area. That´s just the way things seem to go a lot of the time haha. I was only here for one transfer though!

So now I´m getting transferred to the city of Santa Fe again. And I´m not gonna be zone leader anymore, it looks like I´m getting transferred to my last area to die. My new comp and I are gonna be doing a whitewash (replacing both of the Elders that were there before), so it should be a lot of fun. I´m looking forward to it. And I´m gonna miss being a zone leader cuz it´s a lot of fun, but I feel good because both the zones I was in are doing really good now. This last transfer our zone baptized second best in the mission. There was only one other zone that baptized one more person, and it was the zone I was in right before.

Ok well I´m pretty sure that´s all I´ve got for now. Love You family!

Love,

Elder Boice