Elder and Sister Prater in Newport Beach, California Mission

A highlight of our week was to go whale watching with my brother, Dard, who is visiting Newport Beach for the week.  As I was thinking about how wonderful it was to be back in the Newport Harbor where I spent endless hours of my childhood, I mentioned to my brother how I never imagined that this would be where I would serve a mission.  His reply was that he was glad because other wise we would never see each other.  He lives in Utah and can't really travel to South Carolina.  Over and over again I am reminded of just how much Heavenly Father loves us and wants to bless us.   As we were watching dolphins, pelicans, seagulls and seals feeding on small fish, our boat nature guide explained how seagulls can not plunge dive into the water to catch fish.  They can only grab fish that are on the surface of the water.  If you are like me, many times have I been on the beach and watched seagulls steal food from beach bags.  I have had a prejudice agai...

  On Valentine's night we attended the   Journey: Reflection  performance of the BYU I nternational Folk Dance Ensemble at the Center for the Arts in Escondido.  A member of the ward invited us to join him and his twin brother.  It was an amazing evening with so many talented performers.  We spent that morning visiting the Bates Nut Farm in Valley Center which is near by.  They had a great variety of nuts, candy and preserves.  The farm also had some caged animals you could feed.   We have a routine of traveling to a couple of stores about every other week to buy our favorite California foods.  We start by going to Mrs. Taco in Vista, driving up the street to the strawberry stand, stopping at Northgate Market for tamales and chile rellenos, and than finally our last stop is Frazier Farms grocery for chips and salsa.   We spent our afternoon of Valentine's Day in this routine.  During our usual routine of visiting...

  We had a very wet week with rain. The biggest rainfall was in the Los Angeles area which is north of us.  We didn't have any problems with flooding in our area, just a constant down pour of rain.  It wasn't a heavy rain but a constant rain.  Despite the rain, we kept busy this week with  several service opportunities and  Zone Conference.  The conference was at our own church building which is always convenient for us.  We love to see all the missionaries in the southern zones.  We learn so much from our mission leaders and feel of their love for us.  We also took the time this week to travel to Camarillo, where we used to live, and visit with family and friends.  I didn't take very many pictures but we did see so many people that we love and miss.  Our time in our mission is getting shorter so we wanted to make sure we connected with friends before it got too late.   We visited the animal shelter with our daughter ...

 Sometimes in life you have those perfect moments where despite what is going on in the world around you, you couldn't be happier.  It all has to do with the focus of your life. Wednesday evening I experienced one of those moment as we were traveling home from the temple with our friend, Jay.  We had spent the day in the temple performing ordinances for our deceased relatives.  Afterwards we had stopped in a mall to grab some dinner and on the way home, we were driving on Interstate 5 with the Pacific Ocean in our view.  The sun was just setting.  I felt so content and happy with all that we had done that day and now one of my favorite views was in my sight.  I felt so blessed.  It was a perfect moment.  Earlier in the day, I was trying to print off a family name card to take to the temple.  I had already printed all the other cards that we needed for the day perviously. That morning I realized I was short a card which is why I was tryin...