Elder Carston Mark Calder

It was Mardi Gras this past Tuesday. For those who don't know, my family used to live in New Orleans, Louisiana, and celebrating Mardi Gras is a favorite family tradition. Which is ironic... because I totally forgot about it until the day after. While my family was celebrating the holiday and no doubt missing me, I was totally unaffected and passed the holiday in blissful ignorance.  Coincidentally though (or not??) that same day we had dinner with Sister Baker from the Black Canyon Ward. Sister Baker volunteers to feed us every Tuesday, and she'll let us pick any restaurant we want and meet us there. She usually doesn't stick around afterwards because she doesn't like eating out, but if we go somewhere with a wait time we get some time to talk to her. She's a very interesting person, she was an English professor (she worked at BYU-Hawaii for a while) and her whole house is full of books. The first time she took us out to eat we had a really fun conversation about m...

The excuses vary, but the lack of email stays the same.  Hello everyone, it's been a while. It's been a whirlwind of a transfer, I don't know if I've ever been more busy in my life. Elder Jarrett is a very hard worker and together we've seen a lot of cool things happen. I learned a lot from his example, but probably the most important takeaway I had was seeing firsthand the difference that showing sincere love and concern for other people makes. We went to a Stake Missionary Training for the Phoenix YSA Stake and something they taught there stuck with me: "even if you don't have natural talent in things like people skills, everyone is capable of being a friend." I'm not the most charismatic person, but I do think I'm capable of being a good friend. So for this transfer I'm going to try to not put so much pressure on myself to try and be someone I'm not, but simply to be a genuine, kind friend to people.  - - - Probably the highlight of ...