Elder Glenn Johnson: Livin' the Dream in Berlin, Germany: Harambe

Hello my Lieblings,

Let's just get right to it shall we. Tuesday was quite the day. We had an awesome day planned with a lesson with Andreas and a lesson with an inactive member. For a little back story on him, he stopped coming to church a while ago due to whatever reasons. Every now and then, he calls the missionaries up because he's ready to switch his life up and get on the right track. Wonderful, doing our job for us. The problem is, that he lives one and a half hours away from us by car, or 3 hours by train/bus. So the last time he called the elders was about 6 weeks ago or so, and they made out an appointment with him and got the legendary Brother Jablonsky to come be a joint teach/drive with them. They made the trio out, and low and behold, he wasn't at home. They called him and found out he was actually in Brandenburg, so that was a little lame. NEVERTHELESS, I didn't let this story take away from my faith in him this time. He called us, we made an appointment out, and Brother Jablonsky offered to take us again. We all had indubitable amounts of faith in this guy. We called him 2 hours before the appointment, no answer. 1.5 hours before/the start of our trip, no answer. Ever ten minutes on the drive there, no answer. The deciding moment, the ring of the doorbell, no answer. Unfortunately, we had a little too much faith. We also got ice cream to calm Elder Noland down a little bit.

Tschüß, son (another Best Friend For Life)

Later that evening as we were settling down, some thunderstorm clouds started brewing up which was quite the treat. We brought our chairs and a table out to play some chess in the beautiful weather, until it started pouring down rain. Instead, we sat there and just soaked in the sweet feeling of a good old thunderstorm, which you don't find very often in Germany. Makes me miss monsoon season, or better known as the best part of the year.

Thursday was the holiday I previously spoke about, known as Christi Himmel Fahrt. It was just as was explained, and better. We were doing yardwork for a long time and about every 5 or so minutes, a trailer being pulled by a large lawnmower or something of the sorts would drive by with about 15 drunk men in the back partying and screaming. Amazing. Also these "cars" go so slow that they back up traffic really bad, and make it basically impossible to get around by car.

We had a Tausch on Friday with the Potsdam elders. It was quite the average day, until we needed to check out the Glienicke Bridge. This bridge is the one used in the movie, Bridge of Spies, and the one used in the Cold War to trade the dude. It was a sick bridge and sick to think we are at the same place where that all happened. Then there was a guy setting up stuff that made it look like he was going to blow the bridge up, but we won’t talk about that.

Tausch with my boys, with Elders Penrose and Earl

Glienicke Bridge

Babelsberg schloss (and me)

Transfer calls came already! This transfer seriously flewwww by so fast with my legend. Elder Noland is being transferred to Hof with swag daddy Hansen. Hof is the southernmost part of our mission in Bavaria. He's going to earn the right to buy Lederhosen so that’s sick. I'm going to be staying in Brandenburg and receiving my Schatz elder Oliver. He's the Farsi group leader, so I’m super excited to be able to learn some actual Farsi. It should be a good couple transfers with my legend.

Sunday was quite weird, but that's also as far as we need to go into that. We ate lunch with some of the young women from the Berlin Stake so that was pretty solid.

For a spiritual thought today, I wanted to share a scripture that a sister in my district used during her lesson at district meeting.

It's in D&C 50:

40 Behold, ye are little children and ye cannot bear all things now; ye must grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth.

41 Fear not, little children, for you are mine, and I have overcome the world, and you are of them that my Father hath given me;

42 And none of them that my Father hath given me shall be lost.

I really loved this scripture and how we are all children of the Father and none of us will be lost with Christ as our shepherd.