Earthquakes in Argentina and Chile

Hi family,
We have had several people ask us if we've heard from Cooper since the earthquakes in Argentina and Chile yesterday, but we haven't received a phone call or email yet.  I'm sure he's fine and he'll have some interesting stories to tell in his next letter. 

I've been receiving hourly reports from other moms who have missionaries serving in the earthquake zones who have been sharing great faith-promoting stories of how the Lord has been carefully watching over the missionaries and the members of the Church down there. 

Please keep Cooper in your prayers, as well as all of those who have been touched by the devastating tremors.  Cooper comes home in exactly 31 days!  Woohoo!

Trina

February 25, 2010

Hey fam,


How´s everyone doing? So it turns out my companion is not from Puerto Rico after all. He´s from Nicaragua. Pretty cool, I don´t think I had ever met anyone from Nicaragua before him.  The other day a Chilean Elder told me I speak with a chilean accent but but with the Argentine "sh" (sho me shamo). Oh and by the way my new companion isn´t from Puerto Rico. Turns out he´s from Nicaragua, cool huh.

Ok well I´ll retell the story of my week, trying to include spiritual and funny moments. Last Wednesday was transfer day, so I waited in the bus terminal a good chunk of the day, probably like 7 or 8 hours. In the wait I talked to a family that had listened to the missionaries and been to church before. The husband had a big bandage wrapped around his foot and I asked him why and he said he got shot there. My new comp and I put his stuff in our house and then we went out to a few appointments we had and we ended up finding and teaching a guy who had a big bandage wrapped around his waist because he got shot in the back. And yes this is a different guy than the guy we´re teaching that got shot 9 times in the stomach. Haha so I don´t know maybe getting shot is an incentive for people to turn to God and that´s why we keep finding people like that.

There´s a store in our area that sells furniture and the name of the store is Moroni, so we went and tried to give a Book of Mormon to the owner. But he said missionaries already gave him one like 15 years ago and he "doesn´t talk about God". Oh well, haha it was worth a try.

Oh another thing that happened this week was the gas to our house got cut off so we went about 5 days eating sandwiches and cereal, haha. On Sunday we were sick of sandwiches so we grabbed some sticks and stuff that we found on the side of the road and we cooked over a fire in our backyard.

(Editor's note: Ok, that looks like a major pain in the neck and quite unsanitary.  EESH!)

Yesterday our bishop took us on a drive through the city in our area. He doesn´t want us to work in the poor part of our area so he showed us around in his car all of the wealthier parts and the schools and stuff telling us that we need to work there. So I guess we probably will. Members don´t ever come teach with us, sometimes because they think it´s too dangerous where our investigators live. So maybe if we can find some richer investigators our members will help us more. We´ll see. We´ve been trying to find people in the nicer areas, but no one has let us in their house yet, and we haven´t received any references form the members. That´s ok though, I like a challenge, especially for my last area.

Oh yeah also yesterday morning we helped a member build his house a little bit, which was pretty fun. Construction in south america is WAY different than in the States.

Well I love you family, I´ll talk to you next week!

Love,

Elder Boice
 
Countdown:  Cooper comes home in only 34 DAYS!  Woohoo!

February 16, 2010 LAST transfer day!

Hi family,


It´s a sad but exciting day. Tomorrow is the start of a new transfer, which is also my last transfer. That means I´ve got only 6 more weeks to leave a mark on my area and try to get our investigators into the water.

My companion, Elder Carrillo is leaving and I´m staying here. (Editor's note:  The picture below is of Cooper with Elder Carrillo.)  My new companion will be Elder Soza, my 16th companion! From what I hear, he´s from Puerto Rico and he has a year and 2 months in the mission. Supposedly he´s still junior companion because of some problem he has. I guess I´ll figure it out eventually. It´s probably a good thing I have a new companion because my last companion and I got along TOO well. It was hard for us to plan and stuff sometimes because we´d go off talking about other stuff and then realize we hadn´t finished planning.

Well so anyway it´s been a good week. We basically just have 2 families that are progressing toward baptism, and then there´s a couple other people as well but they´re not progressing too fast. On Friday I did divisions with an Elder from Chile that I´ve done transfers with before. He´s really funny, because he´s a great Elder but for some reason the majority of his investigators are young women. We found and taught a new family when I went with him on Friday. And, of course, it was a single mom with all daughters. I laughed afterwards cuz he said it´s his curse that he can never find guys to teach. It actually was a really good lesson though. When we told Joseph Smith´s first vision you could look them in the eyes and tell that they felt the Spirit during it.

The bad news for the week was that both of our good families that we´re teaching didn´t show up to church on Sunday, and we have no idea why!! Commitment can be so hard for people.

Well I love you family. I´ll talk to you next Wednesday!!

Love,

Elder Boice
 

February 10, 2010

Hi family!,


Dad sent me some pictures of a 1950´s sock hop?, and it looks like Brad´s turned into a real lady´s man. I hope everyone had a great week. I´m gonna try to send a few pictures today with my email.

We had a good week here. Friday we had another zone conference , and it was a pretty good one. Lots of focus on obedience and planning. On Saturday it rained pretty good. Good enough that the streets got flooded a little bit, but only up to a little above our ankles. I love the rain here because when it´s really hot and it rains it just feels really nice and it´s fun.

We taught a family again that we had taught once and it went pretty well. The mother of the family had read the Book of Mormon and prayed and that night she dreamt about “God and the gospel” in her words. She wasn´t sure if that was the answer to her prayer so we told her if she wasn´t sure to pray again.

Sunday was fun because the mission president was in our sacrament meeting with his 1st counselor. They didn´t really tell us why, I think it´s just to try and help our ward a little bit. But it was fast and testimony meeting, and president started looking at me so that I would get up and share my testimony, so I did and then he shared his as well. The testimony he shared was just purely about the message of the Restoration and how he knew it was true, and it was really powerful. It was a really quiet and spiritual meeting and our investigators felt great.

Later that day we went to work in another area with all the missionaries in the zone. I went with a member, and we visited less-active families and it went pretty well. We also ended up talking with a Jehova´s Witness family cuz a drunk guy invited us over. So contentious but so funny to talk to.

Monday was my comp´s birthday, so I made him some birthday pancakes cuz I didn´t know what else to do. Tuesday I did 2 baptismal interviews. That was fun, they were an 8 year old boy and an 11 year old girl. The parents have some problems but the kids are nice.

And that brings me to today. We played soccer with a couple other zones and our zone was pretty much undefeated. But man does it get hot outside this time of year!   A normal day it gets to like 42-44 degrees celsius, with LOTS of humidity. You´ll have to figure out what that would be in fahfenheit.  (Editor's note:  I looked it up and it's about 111 degrees!  EEK!)

Ok well I love you all family. Have a great week. I´ll do my best to answer your prayers and finish the mission strong!

Love,

Elder Boice

February 3, 2010

Hey family,


It´s been a pretty good week. The good news for this week would be that our investigador Claudio finally got baptized! He was supposed to get baptized for the last 2 weeks but didn´t come for various reasons. We finally figured out what was wrong. He seemed to think that he could never receive forgiveness because he thought he had denied the Holy Ghost. So we talked to him about that for a while and what it means and that seemed to reassure him. He has had to make some really big changes in his life in order to be baptized but he was kind of over-exaggerating when he thought he had commited the unforgivable sin.

So on Saturday he was baptized. We work in 2 areas and he belongs to the ward that we don´t work in as much. The baptismo went well and some of Claudio´s family came. We´ll see if we can start teaching some of his Brothers and sisters.

On Sunday my companion and I did divisions with the members to go to both wards that we have, and I went to the meeting where Claudio was confirmed a member, and they asked me to perform the ordinance. That´s the second time I´ve been able to confirm someone and give them the gift of the Holy Ghost, and of course it was a good experience.

The only other cool experience I can think of was yesterday. My companion and I prayed in order to pick streets to knock, something that we should probably do more often. We prayed and seperately picked 5 streets in our area to knock at a certain hour, and when we compared what streets we had written down, we saw that we had 4 in common. That was cool. So we went and knocked and didn´t find anyone, and when our time was up we were about to head back to the apartment when we ran into the former bishop who´s inactive now. We set up an appointment and I assume that must be why we were supposed to be at that place at that time.

Another cool thing that happened was we went and visited a part-member family in the ward to meet them, and the dad said that he had been praying the last few days that we would come, and there we were. This guy has an interesting story. He´s in a wheelchair because he was shot like 9 times in the stomach. He wants to be baptized but he´ll have to get married first. We´ll see what we can do.

Ok well that pretty much wraps up my week. The war with the cockroaches rages on as always. Today´s P-day so my companion and I are gonna look for some bigger weapons to battle the cockroaches.

Oh and we´re not allowed to email anyone other than direct family, but Brother Figgat sent me a really nice email. Tell him thanks for me. He was my favorite teacher in church, and that shows that he´s a great teacher by trying to keep in touch with his students. The new Priest Quorum Teacher is gonna have a tough act to follow. I´ll have to write him a big email once I get home.

Thanks for the update on the family. Sounds like things are going well. Seems like Brad is getting to be pretty studly. Is every Saturday night a dinner and a movie night or was it just something special for that night? That´s good to hear that Brad enjoys spending time with the family over airsoft with friends. I regret the time I missed before the mission that I could have spent with the family.  I seemed to think that having a girlfriend was much more important than it really was. Honestly if I could do if over again I wouldn´t have had a girlfriend before the mission.

Sounds like the Pinewood Derby was fun, celebrities and everything :).  Yeah actually this last week I decided that the time had finally come to set my New Year´s Resolutions. Which was weird because most of this year I won´t be spending in the mission. I´m planning on going back to school in the fall. Which means during the time in between I´ll be able to work and do some other things. I´d like to spend lots of time with the family, those things you mentioned all sound like fun. And I want to get in good enough shape again so that I can compete on the Ranger Challenge Team again when I get back to school. Maybe I could even practice some martial arts with you and Brad.

Oh so since you mentioned work when I get back, I´d love to do something that I could use spanish with (speaking of which how´s your spanish?). I really have no idea what I´d be able to do besides that. I guess if you and Mom kept an eye open that could be useful for when I get back.

Ok well thanks for everything family. I love you all.
Un abrazo,   (a hug)

Elder Boice the 2nd