Elder Carston Mark Calder

The size of our district (6 people) more than doubled this week, at district council we had 13½ in attendance. The Zone Leaders visited and our special guest Brother Olsen, who was there to talk about his experiences answering difficult questions on his mission, came with his 3 kids and expectant wife. It was a pretty big honor especially since we had Spider-Man himself (pictured in the middle) as one of the special guests. It was also quite a loud district council but I liked it that way, it reminded me of back home.  At Zone conference we have a ceremony where the Golden Cactus award is given out to those who had a green driving record on their TIWI device for 10 transfers straight or something like that. I recieved my award last Zone Conference, but what was my surprise when I was called upon to recieve it AGAIN! When my name was called, it was perhaps the proudest moment of my entire life. I, Elder Carston Calder, once a driver who would strike fear into the heart of any ration...

  Thank you so much to everyone who sent me Christmas cards! I really loved them.  - - - -  I don't usually do spiritual thoughts but I had a really good personal study yesterday so I wanted to share what I learned. I meditated upon and studied the relationship between doubt and faith and made some new connections. A lot of my insights came from an article on the church newsroom website.  Faith is belief that gives someone power to act.  Doubt is not the absence of faith, it is a challenge to faith caused by adversity. When we suffer doubts it is because there is external or internal pressure in our lives that makes it harder to exercise faith and so we naturally feel less able to believe.  It's easy as a little child to trust your parents when they say it's safe to jump into the pool from the edge, but it's harder when they say it's safe to jump from the high dive. Intellectually you know your parents are trustworthy and they won't steer you wrong but you ...