Perfect Moments

 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 trying to print it off but was having trouble with my computer not connecting with my printer.  I fiddled with it for a while and finally gave up as I didn't want to be late.  Joe and I stopped to say our daily morning prayer before we walked out the door and just as we finished the printer randomly printed off the card!  I think our ancestor was very happy that he didn't miss out on us performing ordinances for him that day! 

From Elder Prater- The Newport Beach Temple had been closed for a coupleof weeks and it was our first visit back.  I went through the veil and went over to sit down in the celestial room and as soon as I sat down a thought came out fo the blue- "it's good to be back".  And I realized that IT IS GOOD TO BE BACK.  I hadn't thought that much about it til that moment, I 'm sure that someday that will be what it is like to come back to the presence of our Heavenly Father.  There is peace and serenity there. 

Our week had started out with another senior missionary bonfire.  We had another couple, the Merkleys  leaving to go home and we all wanted to get together one last time with them.  We also had a couple of new couples that we wanted to meet.  The Snyders were a new couple that actually lived in Camarillo some of the time that we did.  It was fun to talk about the people that we knew in common. It was a beautiful evening at the beach. 

Elder and Sister Snyder, Elder and Sister Cooper, Elder and Sister Crawford , Elder and Sister Merkley, Elder and Sister King, The Sisters and Elder Kearsley, ourselves, Sister and Elder Spencer, Sister and Elder Horlacher

We announced the winner of the shiniest apartment award this week at our district meeting.  The tough part was it was a three way tie.  So to made it fair we printed out a certificate of excellence for the top four cleanest apartment.  We picked a name to see which of three companionships that were tied would take the trophy home.  We had never seen such clean apartments before!  Our zone worked very hard so we decided to reward everyone but serving them a Taco Tuesday after our district meeting.  



The winners- Elder Curzon and Elder Carlson 



Certificate winners - Elder Kane and Elder Christensen 






It has been raining quite a bit this week so on Saturday when the rain was paused for the day, we took the opportunity to go for a walk and check out the world's longest stress ribbon bridge near Lake Hodges.  


These are the highlights of our week in the Newport Beach, California Mission!

 

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