Elder Carston Mark Calder

  After 6 days as a biking missionary I am happy to report that I am not dead. Yet. ...Actually, it's been pretty great. This area is actually very well suited for bikes; it's mostly flat, probably 95% pure suburbia, and maybe 35 minutes from farthest extent to farthest extent (not counting Sun City Festival, which is 11 miles out into the desert and now unreachable without getting a ride from someone). The weather has been beautiful, it's unseasonably warm for February and people are predicting an even more brutal summer than last year, but right now it's close to perfect.  It feels good to work your muscles as you move from visit to visit, and you burn more calories so I'm hoping I start losing more weight. We've been talking to way more people in the streets, haven't met anyone who was too interested but we did talk to some interesting people. We met one guy who was from Lithuania and was actually baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ over there, his f...

Our prep day is on Tuesday this week due to transfers. I have now been a missionary for twenty-one months. This next transfer is my second to last.  The calamity of calamities has come to pass, the Sword of Damocles that has been hanging over my head for almost two years has finally fallen down to smite me in my arrogance.  When I first arrived in the mission, I had my initial interview with my first mission president, President Eyre. He suggested that for my health and well-being he would be putting me in a bike area very soon. I expressed that I was not the biggest fan of that idea but he seemed determined. However when he left 3 weeks later and President Fisk came in, it seems that the plans for me were lost somewhere because I escaped being on bike. Two Arizona summers have come and gone, each hotter and more brutal than the last. Anxiously I watched the transfer board every time it was released, waiting to see when my time would come. My biking exchange in the summer with...