Jacob Dyer Missionary Blog: August 18, 2014

We said our goodbyes at the MTC and I had to wake up at 3:30 am to leave. It was tiring only on 4 and a half hours of sleep. Thank goodness for four-wheeled luggage, because my bags were so full. We traveled to the Salt Lake Airport and I was out the whole ride – very tiring time. It was interesting using the phones at the airport – pay phones. But at least I got to talk to people.

The first thing I noticed when we landed in Riverside was the pollution – a nice beautiful blanket of smog covering the area. We got off the plane and met some other missionaries. I thought they were greeting us, but they were on their way home. Two years – that's a longggg ways away.

I met the mission president, President Mullen and his wife. They're very nice people. I also met an Elder from Hong Kong who was leaving for home. Apparently there's an area in the mission with 80% Chinese people. I'm excited for that.

I rode with President Mullen to the mission office. There are a ton of palm trees lining the streets. There are also these huge mounds of dirt (they're actually hills), that don't have any trees on them because we're in a desert – very weird terrain here.

The mission home is part of a church building. I got in and found my bike under “Elder Dyer”. Turns out I won't really be biking my first transfer though! Anyways, I passed their driving test in a truck, which was a very elementary driving test.

In my first interview with President Mullen he asked me if I was flexible and if he could trust me. At first I thought he meant physically flexible. Turns out he meant just flexible in different situations. That was embarrassing.

We had training and orientation all day and I was so tired. But we pushed through. It was pretty much training, eat, training, eat. We met our trainers at the end. I got put with Elder Johansen, who is 21 months into his mission. I'll be "killing him" at the end (when he "dies" and goes home),m which is kind of weird to hear. But he's a great guy, very tall.

We're driving, so we loaded the car and went first to get our OYM's. OYM's are "open your mouths" where we talk to random people, ask if they need help or anything and if they want to learn anything. We have to get 10 per day so we went to a parking lot of a grocery store. It was fun talking to random people.

Turns out I live in a homeshare rather than an apartment. It's where church members have missionaries staying in their homes. I'm with the Webbs and it was great, but when I got to the door I heard dogs barking. My heart dropped [due to my dog allergy]. But it's been okay so far, so we'll see.

The first morning was fun – woke up, ate breakfast, worked out. We had some lessons.

(sorry I'm like out of time so I'll write faster next week)

Q: will you get ipads?

A: In the fall, and I'm English speaking right now [as opposed to Chinese speaking]

Q: how many Chinese speaking missionaries are there? Will you still get to study Chinese every day?

A: Yeah there's like three [in addition to me]. One is training the new one and the other is with an English speaking companion. I still get language study.