Hola!

Hey!

This week was another great week in O.C.! We were always busy because we had the opportunity to go to the Portland Temple on Tuesday and then to celebrate the 4th of July!

I love going to the Temple for many reasons. I love the look of the Portland temple. The grounds are very beautiful. All the landscaping is very green. Another reason I really like it is because about 3 months ago they put in the visitor center there. We now are one of a few missions to have a visitor center in our mission. The visitor center is A LOT smaller than the Nauvoo or Washington D.C. visitor centers, but it is amazing. The church has put great technology in the visitor center so that there are many videos to watch and TVs touch screens. There are touch screens about "Special Witnesses of Christ", The Book of Mormon and how its teaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ, The Life of Christ, The Purpose of the temple, and there is a place where you can watch all of the mormon.org videos. You even use an iPad to click the one you want and then it shows up on the TV!

I also love the Temple because I can learn more about my purpose on earth and Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ's love for me and for everyone. I love just sitting in the celestial room and just thinking about my mission and about my life and how many things I am grateful for and what will happen next in my life. I'm so grateful for the prayers given for missionaries and many others that take place in the Temple. It's a special place. I'm grateful I can go in, just to feel peace and to be happy and feel God's love for me.

Another reason I like to go to the Temple is because that means that after the Temple....we get to go to Deseret Book store! I didn't want to buy much, but I really wanted to buy the Book of Mormon Student manual. I heard it was a great read to read along with the Book of Mormon. I have learned so much from reading the student manual for the Book of Mormon....and guess what? I basically bought one of my textbooks for school cause that's the textbook for the Book of Mormon religion class at school!

Brother Wood, our Ward Mission Leader, then took us out to Panda Buffet! Sooooo goood....but I definitively ate too much...ha.

The 4th of July was great! we were told by President that we should not proselyte on the 4th, but if we had lessons we could teach them. If not, we were encouraged to spend the day with investigators. If you couldn't do that, we could spend the day with members. All our lessons canceled that day so we had no lessons. So it was basically another p-day!!!

Our District still decided to have district meeting, which was totally okay because the missionaries in my district our awesome! Elder Quinton and I are in charge of picking where we go for lunch after every D-meeting....so we went to Mike's drive in! We actually didn't get much because there were some members (the Smiths) who offered to give us lunch at their house and then to stay and play basketball and volleyball in their backyard. The Smiths are in my ward and they are super awesome! And, they have a sand volleyball court AND a basketball court in their back yard. Their house is HUGE! They are super, super nice to the missionaries, and really to everyone. After that we went to dinner at a member's house and then went to the Munoz's house for fireworks. The Munoz's are awesome. Their family is a combination of less active, part member, recent convert family...haha. Jimmy Munoz is our investigator. We are working with him to quit smoking, Max is the recent convert, Jody is Josh's wife who isn't a member and the rest of the family: Tamara(mom), Jaime(dad), and Josh, are less active.

We could be out till 10:30 that night, so Elder Quinton and I went to this bluff for the last 20 minutes and we were able to see all the fireworks in the valley! We could even see the fireworks show in Portland! It was a really great 4th of July!

Love,

Elder Morgan