This week was AWESOME!!

Hello Everyone!

This week was another awesome one. I went on Tausch (the German word that we use for splits) with our district leader and he and I stayed in Oldenburg, and it was a good time. We went finding basically the whole time and we got 6 Books of Mormon out and a few contacts, so it was a solid Tausch. It was also nice to be able to speak English as always haha.

Football (soccer) on Tuesday was awesome as always, I wouldn't have ever expected to like soccer as much as I do now haha.

Wednesday was solid, got a few Books of Mormon out, but Thursday was Harvest Day! Harvest Day is a day where every missionary in our mission was out finding for as long as they could this day, and we had all fasted the day before for it. All day, any companionship who found some success from this day could text in to this one number their success story and it would be sent out to the whole mission. It was so sweet, our phone was just non stop getting texts all day from all the success the missionaries found that day.

Lamberti Kirsche on Harvest Day

Personally, we did amazing too. The morning started off kinda slow, because it was pouring rain all day and it was cold and nobody wanted to hear from us. Then we took a quick break and ate some lunch, and right after, we just blew up! We met this lady who we doored, and she was pretty interested, and we gave her a Book of Mormon and set up an appointment to meet on Friday this week! Now we're just working on getting a joint teach there haha.  But right after that we just went nuts. We got a total of 12 Books of Mormon out, a ton in German and a ton in Arabic, with one in Turkish. It was very successful, and there's no way we could’ve managed that without the help of Heavenly Father.  Amazing, the amount of miracles we saw and heard about that day.

Döner for lunch on Harvest Day!

Also on Thursday, we met with Amjad again! The lesson went seriously so amazing. Probably because it was in English haha. But for real, we taught him everything up to baptism and enduring to the end, but he is still really interested which is so awesome! One of my favorite parts was when we asked him if he would say the closing prayer. And just like anyone unfamiliar with how to pray, he was nervous and didn't want to. We promised him we wouldn't judge him and that Heavenly Father really wants to hear from him, no matter how he does it. Anyways he agreed to say it, and it was such a simple, but powerful prayer. He said, "Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have brought us the truth. Amen." Yes, he missed closing in the name of Jesus Christ, but as we know, God is understanding and knows we make mistakes, and it was seriously so awesome.

Also, he told us he has been talking to his friends about us, and one of his friends wants to meet with us. But she's moving to Sweden soon, so she wants us to hook her up with the missionaries in Sweden, which we will gladly do.  But yeah what a cool experience, especially on Harvest Day. We are going to try to get him on a baptismal date when we meet with him tomorrow, so I'll keep you updated on that!

Saturday, we had our Book of Mormon activity in Willhemshaven, and it was really good! It rained all day again, but we didn't give up.  We got a good amount of Books of Mormon out and contacts, but the cool thing was that Elder Mehr and Elder Sinclair went and looked for one of the investigators that Willhemshaven has, and they met with him.  His name is Stanley, and they asked him why he can't come to church on Sundays, and they found out he lives in Oldenburg! So as sad as it is for Willhemshaven elders, he's now our investigator, haha, because they didn't even know he lived in Oldenburg! Nice though, we got another investigator from something in a completely different city!

Ready to hand out this Book of Mormon on the Waterfront

Sunday we were so excited to see who came to church. We had placed a bunch of invitations and were sure that at least someone we invited would come. We were greeting everyone all morning and nobody had come, so we had accepted our L.

But then, a man named Alex walks in and introduces himself! He lives near the church and just had the feeling like he sould come to our church, so it was so awesome! We talked to him about how our church works, and left our number with him, because he didn't want to set an appointment yet, so hopefully he calls.

Also another girl came on Sunday too that we didn't ever talk to. We didn't get a chance to meet her, but our ward mission leader met her, and hopefully she calls us or comes next Sunday. 

Anyways, that was my week. Another great one. This week we have appointments every single day, and on Wednesday we are going to Hamburg to hear from a member of the Seventy, so we’re looking forward to this week. 

Also, do you know how in the movie, “The Best Two Years,” the two missionaries break the mission record of handing Books of Mormon out? I think they got 62 out in one week, so Elder Mehr and I are going to try our hardest to beat this record next week. We're starting a week from today, and we're going to fast for the success of it next Sunday!

"Here lives the most spoiled Cocker Spaniel in the world." Missing my dogs right about now.

Elder Johnson

Germany Berlin Mission

Bürgerstraße 61

Oldenburg 26123

Germany

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We met Jesus

Well hello there everyone,

I hope you all had a beautiful week. I forgot to tell you all a couple weeks ago we met Jesus in the train station. A man comes up to us and introduces himself as Jesus, and says that he's been wandering the earth for a thousand or so years. Pretty cool, but then he said he needs money, so we obviously gave him all of our inheritance, cause we met Jesus.

Dooring a Retro Train, I mean why not?

 Anyways, man, what another great week! On Thursday we were at the church, preparing for our English class (that nobody showed up to), and we received a referral from Salt Lake for a girl who referred herself. So we went over to her house, and her parents weren’t home so we couldn’t teach her anything, so we just introduced ourselves. She's about 14 or 15 years old, and did foreign exchange in Utah with an LDS family! She knows a good amount about the church already and we had a good meeting with her and her mother today!

   

Also this week, we saw some success come from the Book of Mormon activity we did last week!  So, Elder Mehr and another Elder met this guy that speaks super good English but was super interested! He's from Syria, and we met with him last Friday! The meeting went super well. We taught the entire first lesson, and most of the second. We also hit him with the soft baptismal invitation, where if he finds what we are saying and the church is true, that he will be baptized and he said he would be! But yeah and then he invited us to come back this Thursday, so he's now a real investigator so we’re super hopeful about him too! Weird that that is my first investigator of the whole mission basically. The other has been investigating the church for 21 years and isn't budging so not sure if I can count him haha.  But yeah that was awesome.

Then on Saturday we went over to Leer for the Book of Mormon there, and we just drove over to a city like 40 minutes outside, called Emden. It's a really pretty city, but we went there for a couple hours and did some finding. Then after that, we went over to a small village and just doored every single house in it, which was pretty fun, and we found some good success from it! We got around 7 or 8 books out of the whole thing, and I got one out in Polish too, so that was cool! Hopefully they can see some success come out of it like we did.

No place like home, though... Elder Johnson may just be more at HOME there in Germany than he realizes.His 25th great grandfather, Philip Von Hohenstaufen, was the King of Germany from 1198 till 1208, when he was assassinated in Bamburg Germany!! 

My District at Max's place. Elders Colemere and Sinclair on the left. Center, Max (my favorite American living in Germany) from Miami, FL, now living in Leer, Me and Elder Mehr on the right.

Anyways that's about it for this week, oh and someone totally
said, "I'm not interested," right after they opened the door and before we had even spoken a word to her. Hahaha funny stuff how people can just tell we're from America. Anyways I hope you all have a wonderful week, also love your dogs for me.

Elder Johnson

Germany Berlin Mission

Bürgerstraße 61

Oldenburg 26123

Germany

Von meinem iPad gesendet

Alles Gute zum Valentinstag

Hello dearest family and friends!

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day! Germans don't celebrate it very much here, some do though so it was kind of a little fun. Our sweet senior sister made us some Valentine's Day cookies so that was wonderful. Also I am sorry for the delayed sending of this email, my P-day was changed to Wednesday this week.

Oh man this week was packed! I went out to Leer on splits with good ole Elder Sinclair. He's a pretty funny Brit. They have islands in the top of their area, on the Nordsee, that they've never been to, so we decided we would go to them for the first time. We got there and parked and went to go get on a ferry to the islands, and the attendant told us that the last ferry coming back to the main land is the one we are arriving on, so we would have to come back immediately. So obviously we didn't go, but instead went finding around the coast line. We met a man and his family who were flying kites (it was insanely cold with crazy winds), and he is from 10 Kilometers away from where Elder Sinclair grew up, so he speaks English, and Elder Sinclair and I had a great talk with him about everything. Sadly, he didn't have much interest in the church, but we took a selfie with him so that was well worth it. 

Also this week, the senior couple, the Stewarts, took us to a city called Bad Zwischenahn that's in our area, but we never get to go to, because we don't have a car and it is not in the bus range, so we don't ever get a chance to go. We went over to a big lake in the middle in the city and we looked at all the cool old historic houses and windmill, and did a lot of finding there! People walk along this water line, because its very peaceful and we got to talk to people about the Gospel there, so that was great! We had a couple great conversations, one of which was with a great couple that had some quite appealing dogs, so obviously I had to go talk to them. They were fairly interested, and we gave them a Book of Mormon and they said they would give us a call when they're open to meet, so that was awesome.

Shout out to the senior couple, the Stewarts!

 The other great part of the week was Saturday. We planned an activity where all 6 Elders from our district came down to Oldenburg fr a finding activity. Everyone brought 4 Books of Mormon in German, 1 in Turkish, and 1 in another personally chosen language with them. We all had an hour with different companions and we just focused on getting our Books of Mormon out and finding these people prepared to hear the Gospel. We got 17 books out in just these 4 hours, which was super cool! Altogether, that makes 21 that were given out this week in Oldenburg, plus a lot of contacts, so you can say it was quite a successful week in Oldenburg. 

Anyway, since it was just Valentine's Day, I thought I would share something I found about love that I read. Obviously, I was reading about the Love of God in 1 John:4. That chapter really has some good stuff, about why we love God, how we can show our love for Him, how He loves us, it's just a packed scripture passage of love, and it's great. Although my favorite out of all of them is such a simple, yet powerful scripture. In verse 19: "We love him, because he first loved us". What a great message that simple sentence sends. 

My Valentine's Package from my Mom via Amazon Germany!

Sorry I had so much this week, a lot went down! I hope you all have a good week!!!

Saw a tree over a lake, climbed it naturally

Cute Lake then

How do you say, "Delay," in Chinese? Doi Che Ban is Deutsche Bahn (the German Train System)

Elder Johnson

Germany Berlin Mission

Bürgerstraße 61

Oldenburg 26123

Germany

52 seconds

HEY everyone!  

I hope you guys are all doing amazing. 

So this week was on the slower side. Monday-Thursday were pretty good, we went by all of our leftover contacts who had invited us to come by later to talk more, and all of them shut us down, salty haha. One even gave us our Book of Mormon back! There is unfortunately not much we can do about this, besides leave an invitation to pray and let them know we are always there if they have interest. Other than that, we did a lot of finding, I pet a lot of dogs (because I learned the word for "pet" in German), and we got lots of doors slammed in our faces, but we are staying optimistic! 

Cute white pooch

The real fun came this past Friday, as Elder Mehr woke up sick! The mission president's wife told him to stay home and rest until he feels better, and it lasted until Saturday night, so we had a pretty uneventful couple days, that's why I don't have much to write today. I will for sure have a lot more for you all next week, and I apologize for the lack of content! But I hope you all have a great week, love you all!

OH and the reason for the title, is that I would like you all to know I have solved a Rubik's cube this week, in 52 seconds, so when I break the world record, you can all know you heard it here first. 

We saw this on the bus and had to take a pic with it. (Packers in Deutschland)

Who knew Germany had cute sunsets like AZ? (Sunset in Berlin)

​Elder Glenn Johnson

Germany Berlin Mission

Bürgerstraße 61

Oldenburg 26123

Germany