Elder Scott Anderson's Mission Blog: The Real MVP

This week Sister Wilson (in the Patos branch) taught some English to her companion, Sister Scollo, from Argentina. During a phone call with me, S. Scollo practiced one of her newly learned phrases: “You’re the real MVP!” Hahahaha, it’s been a long time since I’ve heard that! It brought back pre-mission memories from Twitter and Kevin Durrant and the NBA. The real MVP here in Patos de Minas this week was definitely our district leader, Elder Ward.

Maria Helena’s baptismal interview was marked for Friday afternoon, but she ended up having to work at the hospital that day until the end of the day. Well, haha, it just so happened (I believe the Lord’s logistics played a part in this ) that E. Ward suffered two kidney stones that same day and went to the same hospital for urgent care. To summarize the story, E. Ward performed the baptismal interview in the entrance of the hospital as he was waiting to be admitted and as Maria Helena was leaving work. I’m sure he was in some great pain as he did the interview and he certainly deserves an award for his effort to fulfill his responsibility.

Maria Helena foi batizada on tem! Even though she worked all through the night, Sunday morning she was excited for her baptism. After church ended we had the baptismal service. It was muito legal to see her change from not reading the Book of Mormon or really wanting to go to church to exercising great faith, being an example to her family (whom we hope will follow her example of being baptized) and loving her new church family. If we follow the Savior Jesus Christ our lives will be changed!

I started my third mission journal this week. The first was all English, the second all Portuguese, and although I’m trying to reach a balance in between the two, the third is just about all Portuguese as well. It really is a challenge to write sensible English. Crazy!

Something happened this week that was a marvelous blessing: we gained an hour and a half of P-Day! Now we only do 30 minutes of personal study instead of 1 hour of personal and 1 hour of companionship study before P-Day begins! This morning we went and played volleyball with the zone for about 3 hours. We threw some American football too! It looked cloudy when we left the house so I didn’t put sunscreen on and WOW I got burned hahahaimcryinghahaha. I’ll be smarter next time.

I hope you guys are enjoying the cold weather! I’m burning up here. Haha, but com certeza I’d rather be here! 5 more months of joy and miracles!

-Elder Anderson