Jacob Dyer Missionary Blog: May 18, 2015

You can check out our mission's blog, find all the pictures of me:

downbythecaliforniariverside.blogspot.com/

Elder Zeng had his first taste of American Chinese - Panda Express. He said it wasn't bad, so he's fitting in nicely in Southern California

Saturday night we met with an investigator family. The dad/husband is getting baptized on the 31st. They took about 15-20 minutes telling me about all the schemes Chinese people have to get passports and green cards (they're not fans of China, but they're from Shanghai). They told me not to marry a Chinese person from China because they're "definitely" trying to get citizenship. I was just laughing the whole time.

We finally were able to set a baptismal date for this one investigator whose husband is a member of 6 months. You wouldn't be able to tell he's only been a member for that long because he's just so knowledgeable about the church! He does his reading. It's amazing to see the way the church can change people. He even asked his kids, do you like it when Dad helps you or Mom helps you. They said dad, because "he's patient." Not that he was a bad person before he was baptized, he was a great person, but after being a member for only 6 months, even his 7 year old daughter and 3 year old son notice the differences. Families are so important! She said her concern is that once she gets out of the font, she'll get a cold because it's been a bit overcast recently. I promised her that the 13th and the 20th of June (her prospective dates) will be Sunny and not just "not too cold" it will be "too hot!" So if it's over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, she said she'll get baptized - the conversations you have as a missionary.

I found out what it's like to run 1.5 miles in missionary clothes. We met this Chinese woman and her friend at the park last Monday and walked with her for 40 minutes. She had a lot of questions about our church. We ended up 1.5 miles away from our car at 9 pm, so we literally jogged back. It was surprisingly not tiring, and we did it in a cool 13 minutes.

I went with Elder Murray to go give a baptismal interview to one of his investigators in Mira Loma - mini Mexico (he's doing English work right now). So here was two Chinese missionaries going in to this house with tons and tons of dogs - not an environment we're used to. But it wasn't the big pit bull that was causing problems. This little tiny dog - don't know what breed it was, was just biting my shoe as we were waiting at the door. All of them were crowding us too, and I was like you have got to be kidding me... Until I was like Murray okay I'm done, this is ridiculous. My shoe's going to rip. So he pulls out this long staff thing that was next to the door and pushes them all away. While I was giving the interview, he had to draw the dogs away with that magic staff so it wouldn't keep bothering us. Only in Mira Loma...

We've been getting a lot of work the past couple weeks. I think it's Elder Zeng getting so many blessings for going on a mission. My whole process was pretty smooth. For him, his dad's not even a member, he's only been a member for five years himself, so I'm enjoying seeing miracles with him in Eastvale.

Apparently my Church translation isn't that exciting. One of our investigators said I was putting her to sleep, so I'm working on having a really animated voice during Sacrament meeting.

It's crazy, it's rained like 3 times in the last few weeks. I have this huge golf umbrella that I found in our apartment from Price and Waterhouse, it's really nice. I don't like small umbrellas anymore. It hasn't gotten hotter yet, but it will soon, it's been really overcast recently. We have a sun visor [for the car windshield] but we don't use it.

It's cool that small acts of kindness add up and can change the results way down the line. As one example, one of my recent converts in Riverside had missionaries talk to him on the street 6 months before he got baptized, but we only taught him for one of those months. His various positive contacts with the church helped prepare him to eventually be baptized. Some of our investigators, or just people on the street are just being prepared by me and my companion. Don't get me wrong, I'm here to reap - that is, to baptize people, but planting these seeds just comes naturally with missionary work.