Monday, June 26, 2017

Unwetter

Hello Kinder Eier

Also, na? We had a pretty legendary week, as usual here on the Havel. I'd say the highlight had to be Friday, interview day. We got up bright and early with our wonderful new haircuts, and got dressed all nice to look pretty for President Fingerle. He looked quite nice with his new haircut as well, might I add. Well, when we were at the train station ready to head back to a great city, we notice not only our train was delayed 30 minutes, but it had a notice by it saying, "not stopping at: _____, _____, _____, and Brandenburg."

So, we had to ride it to Potsdam and get off there to sleep overnight with the Elders there, because we were literally stuck. We then found out that a tree had fallen over on the tracks, because of some severe weather (Unwetter) there. There were small tornados and microbursts... We even were blessed with a call from the Hof Elders (Connor Noland, der teufel & Swag daddy Hansen) asking if we were safe, because they had heard about the weather in Brandenburg. So that was pretty fun and exciting.

Spiel Abend Crew (Game Night Crew with cake!)

I was privileged to give a talk yesterday in Sacrament meeting, my first from my mission actually. I thought it went fairly well, until afterwards when my sweet caring companion roasted my german. Alles klar though, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger right?🙁

We had a pretty neat service project on Saturday where we all stood as living bait to be eaten alive by mosquitoes, quite a good time. No, we did some good stuff though as we removed obstacles in these mini creeks to help the water go through. We were also blessed with some potato salad (Elder Oliver's favorite) at the end.

Well, let’s switch it up. Try reading in the Bible and the Book of Mormon this week, good idea huh? Cool.

Oh, and I didn’t want to forget to thank you for all of your prayers for my niece, Eva. The surgery was a success, and she is recovering fast and got to go home from the hospital two days earlier than expected.

وداعا 


Elder Glenn Johnson
Kirche Jesu Christi
Plauer Straße 11d
Brandenburg an der Havel 14770
Deutschland

Monday, June 19, 2017

Beware of the Drunk Germans

Hello,

A pretty solid week was had for sure. We had a ton of Persian lessons like usual, and a couple highlights. On Tuesday, we were invited by someone in our ward to go to this refugee activity, where they were repairing bikes. So we went by to get our tires pumped and see if there were any Persians we could talk to, and low and behold, it seemed like everyone there was speaking Farsi! We actually saw an earlier investigator who we had lost contact with, and he and Elder Oliver had a solid conversation and we got to make an appointment out! We met with him on Saturday and he taught us some Persian and we taught him some Gospel, good trade.

On Wednesday I was unreasonably punched by a drunk German. We were standing in a grocery store when this man walks in, comes up to me, and gives me a good ole punch on the arm. Oh man, must be one of those dang German youths from our ward or something, thought I. But no, I look over to find this undoubtedly drunk man pointing down to the ground, where a 1 euro cent piece lie. As I picked it up and thanked him for his outstanding help, he keeps walking and gives me another good punch to the back, right in the spine. We got a good laugh out of it though, not smart to react to those types of people haha.

(This Mom was glad he was wearing the full Armour of God with Christ behind him!!)

We did service on Saturday again, it was great. We saw a snake, so I'd say it was worth it. We also saw many snakes at the Berlin Zoo today. Harambe's cousin was there too, I shall leave a picture with him as the feature and me as an extra.

the snakkeeeeeee (not Taylor swift)🐍


the closest we can get to Harambe and some chump

my father and lil Sebastian (looks like he met up with BFF, Elder Mehr, at the Berlin Zoo)

a Great dog, Amy

Yeah that was basically my week. 

Oh, and this Tuesday (tomorrow), my sweet 8 year-old niece, Eva, is having open heart surgery, so please keep her and the doctors in your prayers. Danke!!!

 خدا حافظ

Elder Glenn Johnson
Kirche Jesu Christi
Plauer Straße 11d
Brandenburg an der Havel 14770
Deutschland

Monday, June 12, 2017

Fidget Winner

Alright sons, you're in for a treat this week as you can already tell from the subject line of this email.

This week was quite a legendary one, if I dare say the least. On Tuesday, we had the opportunity to take a train out to.....you guessed it....BERLIN. Yes, I go to Berlin a lot, but it's fun just about every time. This time it was strictly for mission purposes, as there was a Persian investigator in the Tiergarten Ward that wanted to meet Elder Oliver (my companion). So we received permission, and went down there to teach a lesson with him. You might be thinking to yourself, "Wait, didn’t Elder Mehr, the trainer for Elder Johnson, get transferred there?", and you'd happen to be exactly right. Along with getting to travel down to one of the biggest cities in Europe, I got to see my beautiful father in the flesh and bone and long hair. The investigator also didn't show up, so that was a little lame and pointless hahaha.

Me and My Boy

Chillin' at the Tiergarten Ward with Elder Mehr (sent to Elder Johnson's mom, from Elder Mehr today...)

We had a normal amount of people at church on Sunday, little change than last week, so that was nice. Actually, a man who previously served here 7 years ago came back with his wife and visited on Sunday. It was nice to get to have a good ole American conversation with some fellow citizens of the greatest country on earth. That's a W coming back to visit this branch though, 10/10 would visit this branch after the mission.

You're now getting to the point of the letter where you ask yourself, "This isn't sounding as legendary as it was talked up to be." well…you're right. BUT I will now move on to the coolest part of this week. On Tuesday, we were on our way back home from our trip into Berlin, and we got on a bus and saw a father with his two kids sitting there. They were obviously not from Germany, but the kids had something great in their hands—a fidget spinner. Naturally, I sit across from them and pull my own personal fidget spinner out. The kids begin to bump their dad, to get his attention that I have one too.

"Do you want to see a trick?" I ask them, and with their confusing nods of approval, I begin to show them I trick I taught myself, where I throw the spinner from one hand to another without stopping the spin. Now that I basically had them kneeling at my feet, I hit them with the best question on the planet, "Where are you guys from?", and my legends were from Syria. The father hits me back with the same question, only to become more interested until he hit us with the golden question, "What are you guys doing here in Germany?"  Boom. The question that'll bring you eternal salvation.

I then went on to explain why we're here, what we do, and that is to serve others and invite them to come closer to Christ. After explaining all this, we had missed our stop by about 6 stops, so we quickly exchanged Facebook information and got on our way before we got too far away.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had left my fidget spinner on the bus as we scrambled to get connected on Facebook. Too late to run and catch the bus, we pressed forward to get home. The next day, we shoot my legend a Facebook message to ask if we can come over sometime to teach them, and he flat out invites us to come over to drink some tea and coffee. We then found a day we could do it, but he changed his mind and straight up invited us over for dinner on Saturday. Of course we are not going to decline an offer to eat some Arabic food. Seriously, Arabic food is sooo good. He also sent me a picture of my fidget spinner that he picked up off the bus for me.

Then comes Saturday, and we had the greatest Arabic dinner with them, it was amazing. We also taught them most of the 1st lesson, and they seemed super interested! All in all, it was a super great time and I can say without a doubt that this was a miracle. One of the best parts of missionary work is being so front line to so many miracles, love it.

My legend, Elder Oliver, bought 200€ worth of minecraft legos today, so I'd say I'm pretty proud.

Minecraft is Life

Some Good Ole Checkpoint Charlie

Some Good Ole Checkpoint Charlie




Alright Tschüß

Elder Glenn Johnson
Kirche Jesu Christi
Plauer Straße 11d
Brandenburg an der Havel 14770
Deutschland

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Na?

!سلام

Hello friends. I send you all my deepest condolences because there's not too much to report from this week.

I got to see my boy Elder Noland off on Wednesday, that was sad. He will go down as a legend in my book for sure. Everywhere from the fact he tripped on stuff all the time, to him sleeping in every single mode of transportation we ever used. I also picked up my new comp, Elder Oliver, the man himself.

Last Pizza Run with Elder Noland -- more memorable because of the unexpected downpour of rain!

Thursday we had an eating appointment with Sister Musehold which was dope as always. She's getting closer and closer to going to the temple and we totally are going to get to go with her so I’m pumped to get to go back for the first time since December. It’s crazy going from going to the temple 2 times a week at home, to 1 time a week in the MTC, to not going for more than 6 months haha. After that Simon, a member, showed us this cool little mountain thing in Brandenburg that was sick.

The rest of the week was just packed with lessons with Elder Oliver and Persian investigators all across the mission. It's so often we are like always at the church for the lessons haha. It's crazy because were so busy, but there’s nothing much to report from it...I said the closing prayer for an investigator’s lesson who lives in Osnabrück. I met him on Tausch when I went with Elder Teuscher and I was so surprised when he remembered me-- that was sick. Also one of the sisters teaching him was from Australia and had the dopest accent, so of course I had to show off a little with my Farsi skills.

At church we had a total of 7 members there other than us, so that was awesome hahaha. Pretty sick, most likely because it was another German holiday. Haha I swear Germans have holidays like every other week. I'm not complaining though, it's dope.

But yeah for real like not much to report hahaha I apologize, also because of the lack of time. Let's hope we got more to report next week. 


But yeah read the Book of Mormon, it's good!





Elder Glenn Johnson
Kirche Jesu Christi
Plauer Straße 11d
Brandenburg an der Havel 14770
Deutschland