March 2, 2010

(Cooper's shoe....Poor baby)

Hi family,


We´ve had a good week. In summary, we basically started from scratch in our area looking for all new investigators. Our area is pretty central city, lots of intercom doorbells (we call them "quien es" boxes) so it´s not quite as easy to get in houses and teach here. We´re pretty much knocking doors most of our days and trying to work out some more creative things like giving a presentation in a school etc... We´ve been giving out more Books of Mormon than I think I ever have before in my mission just because I´m trying to concentrate more on that.  My companion is really good at talking to people, which is good cuz I´m just pretty straightforward a lot of the time, haha. So yeah I hope we can be a force for good. I feel like I´m doing everything I can, and I´m determined to make March the best month of my mission. Which means there will probably be plenty of barriers...

I´ll tell a couple of stories from the week. On Thursday we went by a guy named Miguel. We had contacted him 2 days before and at first he didn´t want anything but then we started talking and he´s been having a lot of problems (hasn´t been able to find a job in a long time, etc.). We gave him a Book of Mormon and promised him that if he read and prayed and put God first that God would give him more help. And when we went by on Thursday he told us that he just got back from work. We said "you´re working now?" and he said that he read the Book of Mormon the morning after we gave it to him and that night someone called him to give him a job.

Another cool thing that happened this week is that we actually got into an apartment by talking to someone through the intercom! That´s the first time it worked! haha. We´re not teaching that many lessons a week right now but we did have a couple good days and got into a couple houses. On Sunday a bunch of missionaries in the zone came and worked in our area in the afternoon, and we just divided up and knocked doors and contacted people. We found a few good people who listened. One guy is Jewish and I´m excited to teach him.

Another cool experience was that we decided in our planning to have a family home evening with a family in our ward. We couldn´t get ahold of them the night before, but the day of we ran into the mom in the street and told her we wanted to do it that night. She said that that was perfect because the night before she told her whole family that they needed to start doing Family Home Evening the next day. And the next day we found her and told her we wanted to help. They brought their neighbor who isn´t a member and it went well.

Funny experiences of the week: Some kids tried to scare us by setting off a big firecracker behind us in the street. And last night it rained a ton and we lost power in our house right when we walked inside, and the other Elders in my district got flooded in their house. Which is impressive because their house is like 3 feet above street level and has a 1 foot wall in front of their door to prevent flooding.  Let me tell you it´s not easy to cook in the dark! I tried to make a sandwich last night haha and it took me about 10 minutes to do.

About the recent Chilean earthquake...No I didn´t feel anything, but our bishop told us that at like 2 or 3 in the morning you could see the street lights here rocking back and forth. There are a lot of missionaries in our mission from Chile however and the majority are from Santiago. My hijo, Elder Chamorro is from Concepción, Chile, and I heard it hit there even harder. I haven´t talked to him however but apparently our mission president got in contact with all the Chilean Elders families and I think some Elders called home to see if everyone was ok.

I have a new email account now. It´s cooper.boice@myldsmail.net  Yeah I know I won´t be using it for very long but hey it´s a google email address, cool right? It´s supposed to be better. Well so after today when you want to email me just send the email to my new address: cooper.boice@myldsmail.net

Well that´s pretty much everything. On a side note I feel like I´m finally becoming an effective missionary. I feel like just in the last couple weeks I´ve come to understand a lot better what faith means. 

I love you all! Have an awesome week!  Ok well I´m gonna write a more spiritual letter now to my mission president, and then my comp and I are gonna get out of here and go stick it to Satan and kick missionary butt.

Love,

Elder Boice