Elder Carston Mark Calder

Since yesterday was the fifth Sunday of the month, the bishop had a combined lesson with the adults and youth. We were talking about how we can build a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It was an open discussion, where members of the congregation could stand up and share their thoughts. There's this one brother, Jimmy Boggs, who plays the piano in sacrament meeting every week. I'd never really met him before, but earlier that day I talked to him a bit and complimented his piano playing. In retrospect maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. It seems that a word of approval from a missionary may have emboldened him, because he stuck around for second hour for the first time in living memory.  He stood up in the bishop's meeting and the first sentence out of his mouth was "I have a piece of toilet paper stuck way up inside my butt, because I have hemorrhoids." Except he didn't say butt. What followed was probably the most unique testimony I've ever hea...

  This was my craziest week so far! We had back-to-back exchanges on Monday and Tuesday, p-day on Wednesday, and then we were in a trio for Thursday and Friday. On Saturday we hung around the mission office for a lot of the day waiting for Elder Thorne's new companion from the MTC to show up and doing paperwork. So we didn't really have a normal day of proselyting this whole week.  I went over to the Zone Leaders' area on Monday and I worked with Elder Westover. The ZLs are over this experimental branch for former convicts, Oak Branch, which is the first of its kind. Elder Westover said that technically speaking, since it's the only FC ward currently in existence, their jurisdiction covers the entire planet. So they can go wherever wherever want without leaving their area.  (I'm curious to see whether President Fisk would agree on that). We visited one couple named George and Joyce. He's a returning member and she's a convert who got baptized on Saturday. Th...

  It's transfer week! I have officially survived a full 6 weeks in the valley.  It was a very tense transfer meeting over zoom. Elder Cook was positive that he would be transfered, since he's already been in Country Club for 5 months. I didn't want him to go because I've become inordinately fond of him, but I also felt like it was probably time. In the story of my mission this would be the end of the call to adventure/setup, and now the perils and trials of the rising action will really begin. Turns out nope! We will be together in Biltmore/Country Club for one more transfer. We had a really good time going door to door tonight and now we're pumped to get the area popping again. We're eager to see what we can accomplish with 6 more weeks. Elder McPhie, one of the Zone Leaders, is getting transfered out and he was super depressed. So today the whole zone went to a big goodbye lunch at this super sketchy fast food place called Long Wongs Wings, out in the more ghe...

I am really a bad at keeping to a regular emailing schedule! Sorry everyone, it's been a hectic two weeks, not helped by the fact that we had two weird pdays in a row. Last week we had it on tuesday instead of monday because it was Elder Cook's one year mark and we went to the Mesa Temple. We were gone pretty much the whole day so I didn't have time to write.  This week p-day is on Tuesday again, this time because of the Fourth of July. We've been hanging out with our Zone all day at the church. We had a Zone Breakfast that we all pitched in on making, and then had a riveting day playing board games and basketball. Then later in the evening we went to see the fireworks. Ordinarily our pday ends at 6 pm and we're back to proselyting, but since people tend to get drunker and more rowdy on America's birthday the Mission Pres decided we probably shouldn't be out and about. That we decided to use this time to go out and about to see fireworks was perhaps not amon...