Elder Scott Anderson's Mission Blog: I Love Skype and Hard Work!

This was the most important week of my mission so far with respect to preparing for my return home. The nest part of all of it was SKYPE!!!!!

Mom, Dad, Tyler, Heidi, Natalie, Katie, Bryce, Grandma and Grandpa at home and Dallin in Portugal, it was awesome being able to talk to you all! I’m so happy President Buhrer gave us an hour and a half instead of just 40 minutes. It made a huge difference. Next month I’ll be able to speak personally with all of you for 24 HOURS a day! Hahaha I can’t wait.

I had a ton of fun speaking Portuguese with Dallin and watching the family go crazy because they couldn’t understand. Hahaha speaking another language is the coolest thing. I’ll teach you guys when I get back so that you can participate in our conversations a little bit.

I went to Goiania this week for the self-sufficiency class that missionaries do a month before they go home. I’m getting old in the mission :o. We learned about how to prepare ourselves to enter the capital world, studying resume, interview, and presentation techniques that should actually be pretty helpful. My experience as financial secretary really looks great when professionally explained and will certainly help me my whole life.

Oh! Last P-Day we went to the chapel for an almost –the-whole-zone P-Day and played football and basketball (with the balls you sent me for my birthday) and ping-pong. Near the end of the activity I decided to kick the football across the parking lot to see if my leg could handle it (it’s almost 100% now) and see if I still had the skill I had in high school. I warmed up a little bit, and told an elder to go to the other end of the parking lot to catch the ball. I took off my shoes and, with memories of the “glory days” passing through my mind, kicked. The football went over the elder’s head, over the plants behind him, and over the 15 foot wall behind the fence :o. I measured the distance after recovering the ball and it would have been good from 45 yards—and my leg didn’t hurt. Maybe my NFL dreams are still alive…not! Kkkkk.

Saturday morning we went to a member’s house for a service project. Here in our mission we rarely do service projects; I like the opportunity when it comes. The member, Euri was digging out his backyard to put a pool in. We dug a big chunk out of the corner of the yard in 2 hours. It’s been a while since I had had so much fun doing yard work! I remember I didn’t like it and tried to avoid it before my mission, but now, the new and improved Scott Anderson loves working hard in the yard. The biggest miracle of my mission is who I’ve become as I’ve dedicated my time and effort to the Lord. He has done so much more for me that I could have imagined. I like manual labor now. That’s a big and good change, though not even near the greatest, which is my spiritual development.

Jefferson, the 10 year old son of the family of Gilvan who has the busted car we’ve ridden to church in two times now, was baptized on Saturday! It has been really rewarding to see how his family has changed the last few weeks as the light of Jesus Christ has returned to their lives.

I’m going to create a program today called “Terminar no Pique” or “Sprint to the Finish” which will be made of my goals and plans to finish as well as I can my mission and prepare myself for the transition to returned missionary life. I have learned on my mission that planning and organization are what brings success. I plan to apply this knowledge my whole life.

After this letter I’ll only wrote three more! They will certainly be full of miracles and blessings. Amo voces!

Elder Anderson