Is dat possible?

Well friends,

It’s an honor to be able to greet you in the middle of this Christmas—New Year’s week where everyone’s trying out their new gifts and usually where I’m dying to light my fireworks off early—but I’m forced to wait until New Year’s…

I have no clue where to start because it feels like a month since I’ve written last, when it’s only been a week and a few days. I will go through the highlights with you. 

On Tuesday night, I got a call from Elder Neale, the Persian group leader, in a quite panicked way asked us if we were home. We had just gotten home to change so we could head over to play volleyball, so I replied hesitantly yes, and then panicked, he asked me if I could translate for a lesson for Elders at that exact moment.

I wasn’t going to back down, no matter how trash I think my Persian is. I said okay and got my notes, got my trusty comp in the background with google translate on--ready for words I didn’t know--and just went to town. Classically, the elders were teaching a lesson I had no complete notes for, but we didn’t have any time to doubt. Listening to the elders teach in German, I had to translate it in my head from German into Farsi without trying to get English mixed up in there, it was quite interesting! The guy luckily understood me well and I was able to say everything the elders were trying to say, just in a different way.

We received a referral this week from sisters in Cologne, Germany. This new friend of ours is from Indonesia and is truly pretty golden. He has never really been into religion, doesn’t know much about the Bible or Jesus, but has already started praying and reading in the Book of Mormon and seems really interested and it’s awesome.

The rest of our investigators are still doing great and the 3 who are going to be baptized soon are doing awesome.

Christmas was wonderful. On Heiligabend (holy evening, Christmas Eve) we were with a family in our ward who had every type of German cookies and crackers there is. We sang lots and went through the Christmas stories, played games and it was overall a great time. 

Christmas Fun Times

Christmas Day, we were with a family that my dad had been with in Christmas 1981, when he was on his mission in Germany. That was really an awesome experience, and a great fun night as well. 

Christmas Dinner with the Krugs in Hamburg - flashback of Christmas 1981

Also my family was blessed with the opportunity to Skype me so that was fun for them I believe (and me ).

my family I think?

Then on the second day of Christmas (yes, Germans celebrate Christmas for 3 days), we were with another family and had some wonderful food and a good time. Later we went and hung out with Jason, our legend, who’s getting baptized on January 6th, and we watched a great ole Disney movie with him.

Christmas is over, but we need to remember the words of a pastor we talked to while caroling, „We should be thinking about Jesus ALWAYS—not just at Christmas time!“ which is true and great.

Have a good New Year and do some good fireworks in my Name.

Cool, see you, 

goodbye cool Christmas Market

don't mess with us

carolingggggg

Train Station Announcement - Notice all of the references to Star Wars--Hans Solo, Obi-Wan, Vader, C3PO and lastly, Yoda speak: 3 Minutes Waiting You Must

Nice

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

Von meinem iPad gesendet

Jaamoinnn

Merry Christmas you filthy animals

Our week was filled with some great beautiful Christmas bock. We had ZoKo this week, which was quite normal except we were all given copies of the book „Jesus the Christ“ in German from President and Sister Fingerle with mini notes to each of us—very nice.

We met with Jason this week and had quite the bomb lesson. We taught him the law of tithing, which he understood very well, and a bit about the word of wisdom, just answering questions he had (even though some Germans have different outlooks on it). Overall, great lesson. He is still ready and planning on getting baptized on January 6th, which is wonderful.

On Friday, we did some zone caroling around different suburbs in Hamburg, and that was quite the blast. My son, Elder Mehr, and I had a blast giving out cards and speaking to some legends while the rest of our zone sang some Christmas songs. We met some very cool and nice people, a legendary lady from Oldenburg (the city Elder Mehr and I were a year ago), some legendary German girls who have great tastes in music and were also pretty interested in our message (legends took like 3 extra Light the World cards to give to their friends).

some legend we saw in a u Bahn station

Caroling with the Zone

Overall, it was a super fun night—except one noteworthy roast one of us got. As we were finishing up in one of the suburbs, we started getting ready to take a picture, but a passerby didn’t want that to happen apparently. As he walks by, he hits the phone out of Elder Hickenlooper’s hands. The Elder ignores it, and then as he tries to pick it up, the guy kicks his phone around on the ground. We (still posed for the picture ) are all just like, what da freaking heck is going on? The man leaves, but turns right back and starts swearing at us, calling us a sect, and shoving the Elder pretty hard. Elder Hillyard takes a step up to protect poor lil’ Elder Hickenlooper, but the guy walks away (probably because of fear of the great Elder Kevin Oliver Hillyard) and doesn’t forget to leave a good ol’ spit on him.

//Love//

Interesting story, but goes to show how even in 2017 Christmas time we can still get such persecution from people, when we are doing truly nothing wrong, but spreading the word of the Gospel.

We also had a legendary lesson with Richmond and he still really wants to be baptized, but struggles hardcore with getting to church, so we’ll have to roast him nice and good.

Anyways, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and don’t forget to leave room for Christ, the true meaning of why we celebrate Christmas.

Eat some good food.

Bye

Elder Glenn JohnsonKirche Jesu Christi​Heckengang 5521079 HamburgGermany

Sie ist schwanger? Was hat sie gemacht?

Hëÿ,

To start you off on this pleasant P-day, I’d like to relieve you of your worries from the subject line of this email. If you’ve already translated it for some reason or your German is just taking over and you’re forgetting your English, you’ll recognize that the sentence means „She‘s pregnant? What did she do?“ That was a quote straight out of our ward Christmas party, ladies and gentlemen. A few of our legends were acting out the nativity with hand puppets with the kids of the ward participating. Well, Mary’s part comes on and the actor of Joseph (the true legend himself) says to the kids those questions, followed with an „uhh.....I mean....“ and before he could get another word out he had all the adults in the room weak at the knees; great experience.

Christmas is getting closer and closer and that’s great. We had a Christmas party with our fellow workers from the Tafel. We were a little freaked out, because we had no idea what to expect; eating at some random German restaurant (that looked more like a bar from the outside) in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of Germans. But, oh man, was this a treat. I was blessed with some really awesome tasting duck, along with Knödel and Rotkohl of course, and Elder Hillyard unfortunately got Grünkohl (cue Sister Stewart‘s classic „GRÜNKOHL??“), but he enjoyed it. One of the saddest parts was when we realized that it was all free, drinks and everything, and we hadn’t used our free refills to our advantage until about 20 minutes before we were done. Never making that mistake again. But once half of them were drunk and singing it got to be quite the show. Germans and their alcohol, man!

We were also „surprised“ at our Christmas party with the assignment to sing a song. I put quotes around surprised, because we had talked about it before that they might do that. Apparently it’s a German tradition to have the missionaries sing a song at the party. But luckily we were prepared and had gone over the words to „Jingle Bells“ beforehand. We were also pleased with the opportunity of meeting one of the greats this week; Stephen Sinclair. The man who created the legendary pie loving Elder Ryan Sinclair. It was quite a funny experience though, I don’t think I could’ve been able to count how many times this legend said goodbye before he actually left, quite fantastic.

Anyways, other than that the work is going great. We are just waiting on Georg’s papers to be finished then the legend can be baptized, Jason is still getting baptized on January 6th, and Richmond will come around sometime and quit letting our appointments fall through haha. We’ve also been doing lots of finding and spreading the joy of the Christmas season through the light the world initiative. Macht mit.

Peace out

district Christmas sons

ِگِندس (Persian Group in Hamburg)

Huh?

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

Well that's not pretty

Merry Christmas everybody!

We had quite the week. Nothing compared to last week’s craziness, but it was still fun.

winterdom is good

We had a lesson with Jason again that started off not too well, but did a full 180 and ended with him deciding he’s going to be baptized on January 6^th and there’s nothing going to stop him from that, so that was dope.

Georg is also doing quite well. The Rathaus in Wilhelmsburg was super classic and not open at all until today, so he wasn’t able to get the papers done to get married quite yet. But we’re hoping for about 4 weeks from now, we should be ready to baptize the legend. We also had a good amount of lessons fall through this week, which included one with Richmond, so that wasn’t very fun.

legendary poster at Richmond’s house

Other than all that, we’ve just been doing lots of finding and getting everyone to Light the World. We’ve had some super dope conversations with some legends about the real meaning of Christmas, and how most people forget what it actually is. We’ve found the perfect question for people when we talk to them on the street und zwar „What is the real meaning of Christmas to you?“ and that’s perfect BECAUSE, if they are religious, most of them would say it’s about the birth of Jesus, about coming closer to God all that good stuff...but, even if they aren’t religious, they will talk about how it’s about family and just being a good person in general. So no matter in which direction it goes, it’s always super possible and easy to bring it back to the #LightTheWorld initiative, which is great by the way. We’ve been trying to do something every day that goes along with the initiative and posting it on our WhatsApp story so that we can hopefully inspire someone to also try to Light the World.

cute Tannenbaum 

district pdayyyy

nice

You all do the same. Be nice people and love others—that is all.

Byeeeeeeeeee

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

Von meinem iPad gesendet

Pastor Johnson

Instead of greeting you on this fine cold day, I’m just gonna go straight into our week because 1) the bock is running low and 2) the iPad battery is running lower. We had 3 big events this week.

Harburg Christmas Market is in Full Swing

First, we had Thanksgiving!!! We had almost no time throughout the day, but we didn’t let that stop us. We made sure to find a window of time to get some good meats and Thanksgiving feast ingredients. We also made sure we told everyone at the Tafel Happy Thanksgiving. Even though Germany doesn’t celebrate it, they are obsessed with all that happens in America so most people knew what we were talking about.

After our busy day, we were able to finally feast. We had country fried steak, fried chicken, mashed potatoes (done the American way), corn, and of course Mountain Dew. Even though we both know at home we would only be allowed to have water at the dinner table....dad..... But it was truly wonderful and we truly had the spirit of Thanksgiving with us throughout the day.

Thanksgiving feast boys

The next big event was Elder Hillyard’s birthday!!! I was able to sneak off on splits earlier and buy him a new basketball and give it to him on his birthday which was lit. We went and played some soccer where I was the second to last picked (classic), but destroyed nevertheless. Afterwards we headed to Elder Hillyard’s favorite pizza place and got his favorite pizza and enjoyed that.

Harburg Christmas market #birthdayboy

Then we hurried and changed and headed to Stade, to a fireside about baptism. Jason came with us, which was awesome. We had a good time there, the members sang to Hillyard, and we ate some cake which was fun.

As we got back in to Harburg, the suburb of Hamburg we live in, we realized the Christmas market is already up. So we decide to have dinner there and man did we have fun! There are not many better things on this planet than Christmas in Germany. We had some classic Kinder punch, and rode on the carousel with this 5 year old German legend who had not a single clue what America was—it was great. We then ended the night off with a legendary lesson with Jason.

Harburg Christmas market

Lastly, yesterday we hosted a mourning service for a Ghanaian member of our church. I was informed a few hours before the start that I would be needed to, „Preach the word of God.“ So, that I did!

The mourning service advertisement

Needless to say, it was something I’ve never experienced before and also something very cool. They mourned the loss of this member’s mother, but it was nothing like the funerals I’ve been to. They danced, they made sure they were happy and left no room to be sad—it was truly influential.

There were a couple more interesting parts, but we don’t need to get too into that. These people really love God though. It’s awesome!

All in all, we had quite the week. Not enough time to write it all, unfortunately. We had some freaking bomb churros today.

I don’t think I can begin to describe how excited we are for Christmas and how well it’s done here in Germany. But for now, the bock and my batteries almost on empty, sooooooooooo bye

Bahnhof Train Station

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

Von meinem iPad gesendet

Fazed

Welcome back, earthlings. I am honored to have yet another chance to report of my doings here in Hamburg to you all again.

a Beauty from last week

We had a heck ton of appointments fall out this week, which is super lame and not fun, but whatever—you’ll have that. We did get to meet with Jason again this week, and we had a solid lesson on baptism again and answered a couple questions and helped him with a couple of concerns he’s got. To our other baptismal candidates, one was sick this week and the other had completely no time...but we are for sure meeting with all three of them this week--for sure.

One of the days this week, we were in a bus on our way to do some finding because a lesson had just fallen through, and I noticed a mid-twenty year old guy just flat out staring at my nametag like I had a bullet hole in my chest or something. But that’s nothing new, so I ignored it, and once this guy is walking out of the bus, he yells back „DIE BIBEL IST EIN MÄRCHENBUCH!!“ Or for you lesser English speakers „THE BIBLE IS A FAIRYTALE BOOK“ and for those of you who can only speak Persian „کتاب مقدس یک کتاب افسانه است.“ Funny, because 1) he’s pretty wrong on that statement, and 2) he waited until he was out of the bus, because he couldn’t say it to my face. He must’ve been scared I’d just punch him right in the soul with some bomb truths of why he’s completely wrong. Naja, there’s always a next time.

Other than that, we did lots of finding this week and didn’t have much luck. We talked to a man from Italy who is catholic (which is super classic) but hates his church (even more classic). We told him our church is cool and he said he’d try it out so we got his number and hopefully something will come out of it. We also were on an S Bahn to Hamburg as a couple from Poland spoke to us, asking what church we were from. Once we said the name and asked if they’ve heard of us, they said „nope, and we don’t want to hear anymore,“ and continued to ask us about our church. Probably the longest conversation about the church I’ve had with someone after the conversation started with them telling me they don’t want to hear anymore. Neato.

Even though this week wasn’t as successful as some of our others, along with Thanksgiving coming up soon, I’ve been trying to stay grateful for what we have, and it’s helped a lot. Sometimes there are things that don’t go as well as we planned in our life, and it can really bum us out and keep us down. BUT when we try to always keep the spirit of Thanksgiving with us and actually realize how blessed we are to be living in a 1st world country with running water and heating systems; it’ll keep you humble for sure. Since we’ve got Thanksgiving this week, I want all of you to find someone you’re grateful for who you don’t get a chance to tell often that you’re grateful for them, and just say thanks for all they do. I can tell you now, it’ll brighten not only their day, but yours too.



ok bye

St. Michaelis Kirche

on top of the church

apparently the place where Harry Potter was filmed when he goes through the fire and says „diagon alley.“ Somebody fact check it. 

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

#DerLichtEinWelt

Good day, acquaintances.

Well, this week was a crazy one. We started off this week with a total of 0 investigators with a baptismal date and ended with a legendary 3 investigators with baptismal dates.

Let us go through them. Jason, he is a son of a member in our ward, who we’ve been meeting with quite often and playing sports with every week. He is trying hard to find an answer for whether or not the church is true, and if he should get baptized. Well this legend decides to take the 2nd of December as a date for him to get baptized, as he searches further and further to see if the church is true.

NEXT on the list, we have our legend Georg. He is an older gentleman, but he has got quite the young sense of humor might I say. He is getting married, and then gonna get baptized about a week later, how legendary. He reads in the scriptures about an hour a day, and isn’t even a member yet! That’s a pretty solid roast to all of you who ain’t got time for that. An overall legend.

Last but certainly not least, we have our friend Richmond from the wonderful country of Africa. He’s very new to Germany, but has family members in our church and realllyyyyy wants to be baptized. He has already fought against his job to get Sundays free, and he was finally at church on Sunday as well! If all goes well, we can probably get our legend baptized on the 1st of December.

Overall, I am super pleased and satisfied with how well the work is going here. We continue to find new people to teach every week, lose a few every now and then, but wow, it’s wonderful. Anyways, enough with the sappy stuff.

Our district. Rip Elder Ausobsky

We had the chance to go out with some „future missionaries“ on splits this week which was fun. It was good to have a solid conversation with someone who can tell me all about the new xbox games coming out and which ones I gotta play and which ones I shouldn’t. No, but he was a legend. We met ourselves with Georg, drank some God-sent peach tea, some less God-sent weird cake things, and he had a great time getting a taste of the mission life. He did wonderful, also gave out his first Book of Mormon out of many to come.

after the mission prep day

On our mini splits, we were standing in a bus back to the church, and I heard a small family speaking English. Now friends, in Hamburg, hearing English isn’t so rare. But bear in mind, even though not many speak it correctly, there are other countries where the people speak English that can be living in Germany. For example: anywhere in the UK, many parts of Africa, Canada, usw (etc.). This family though was speaking the real correct English, I could just feel it. I headed down towards them and was straight up with them. I started off, „Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I couldn’t help but notice that you guys sound very American.“ Of course they were, and we got to have a solid American conversation with two people not from Utah. Wonderful.

In any case, the work here is walking beautifully, and it’s amazing to see the power the gospel and the Book of Mormon can have in changing people’s lives and bringing them closer to our Father in Heaven.

Stay lit this week boys.

nice

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany