Out for a year? Nah

On Wednesday, October 25 of the year 2017, my fearless Zone Leader, Elder Jarom Hickenlooper, and I were on splits for the day. Going throughout our planned activities for the day, it comes time for us to make our way over to a sister in their ward, who needed help moving things around in her house.

As we are both fairly new to Hamburg, we were a bit lost on the U Bahns, so we decided to get out at a station called Wartenau. Now we are looking for a way to get there, soon to find out, we can take either a U Bahn (the one we were just in) or a bus. We decided to take a bus instead of more U Bahns, because we’re both used to busses and U Bahns are a little foreign to us.

As we are walking up towards the bus stop, I see a woman walk towards me in the corner of my eye, and speak to me starting off in English, and when I turned around it switched to German. „Elder Johnson?“ she asks, looking at my nametag, „Yes, that’s me,“ I reply. She then asks a question I had never thought I would hear for a long time. „Is your dad‘s name, Chuck?“. To this question I reply (in English, even though we were speaking German) „Yes..?“

She then proceeds to recall her memories of my father serving in her ward, as he served in Hamburg more than 30 years ago. She could still remember him coming over to their house for Christmas all those years ago. She saw us two Elders, and knew she recognized my face from the very first sight. She is one of the only people who my dad is still in contact with from his mission in the Hamburg mission, and the chances of us running into each other like that are very very small. But as we learn from the prophets, es gibt keine Zufälle (there are no coincidences).

My Dad's friend, Petra

I hit my year mark on the mission this week, pretty sick.

That was the big highlight of my week. Other highlights: we had a lit supertausch in Harburg where we played an intense game of BS, had some more lessons with some legends, gave some Books of Mormon out, and feasted upon one of the most heavenly pizzas on the planet.

a stake dance we helped set up a bit

This pizza had Ground beef, pepperonis, bacon, chicken breast, AND bbq sauce. We’re talking one of the most American things you can buy here; ‚twas a blessing to eat.

dürüm lit laden

Elder Hillyard is scary when he’s mad

Happy Halloween

Well. The bock is getting lower and lower so I’m gonna say Tschüss!

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

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Zauberei Boys

Moin ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome back to my weekly.

Now that that’s over, allow me to go to the explaining of my week. We met with Jason again this week and that went super well. We were able to go through the 10 commandments and through the rest that we have in our church, and he really enjoyed it and was down to follow them, so that’s a good sign. We also met with our friend Georg a few times. He’s still working on preparing to be baptized so that’s sweet! We went through the baptismal interview questions and he took them like a champ. His son even sat in on most of the lesson.

A miracle happened again this week! We received news from our good friend Richmond who also wants to be baptized, that his boss decided he can have Sundays off from work starting at the beginning of November so that he can come to church! It’s awesome to see that all of our prayers were answered. He’s also working extra crazy overtime for the rest of this month so that he can have Sundays free, which is so cool to see.

We met a very interesting Polish man at a street display this week. He went up to one of the sisters and got real nice and close up to her, so I headed over there to make sure nothing would happen. He couldn’t understand or speak a word of German, and after trying to explain the Church/Book of Mormon in German while showing him the Polish Book of Mormon, we realized 😥 he was just plain crazy. He started kinda touching one of the sisters and then he grabbed one of the sister’s arms and tried to take her with him, and that’s when I decided that was enough haha. I grabbed him away from her, had the sisters go somewhere else, and helped him find his way to anywhere that wasn’t where we were.

Well, that’s about it for this week. We don’t have much time because we went and saw some dope stuff in Hamburg. As a sorry for not writing a ton, I’ll grace your eyes with some good ole pics.

Read the Book of Mormon.

Trip to the Philharmonie via ferry

some bomb ice cream with a member in Buxtehude

Ballin City  

Tschüss

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

I Live Among Hamburgers

Greetings homies,

Welcome back to another report of the 2 American guys trying to preach the word of God in a somewhat anti-God country. We’re still working closely with 2 of our friends who will be baptized, but unfortunately both of them need to wait a little longer to be ready to be baptized, but that’s okay. In fact, we had a small miracle at our lesson with Richmond, our friend from Ghana. We rang his apartment and he let us in. And as we were walking in he was about to walk out to leave, because his boss had called him to come do something. But he decided he’d have us teach him and he would just wait for his boss to call again. We taught for about 30 minutes and then his boss called and cancelled their appointment, so we got to finish our bomb lesson. Miracles haven’t ceased boys.

we representing Arizona here in Hamburg

We’ve been working with another investigator of ours, Jason, to find an answer for the big ole question whether or not the church is true. We spent a good hour or so with him discussing how he can find the answer and what he needs to do with the answer once he gets it, commonly known as real intent. He seemed to enjoy and learn a lot from it, and came to church. So we’re making some good progress here ladies and gentlemen.

Our ward has been focusing a lot on missionary work, which is sweet to see. They emphasize praying specifically for the missionaries of their ward by name, and since they’ve started doing that we have been reaping the benefits from it. We experienced another miracle on Sunday. A little late into the first hour of church, a lady walks in and sits down in the congregation. Throughout the meeting, she did a few things that you’d see normally in a Catholic Church or other religions which aren’t quite what we usually do during sacrament meeting. We went up afterwards and introduced ourselves and she had a cool story. She’s from Haiti and lives here in our little part of Hamburg. She wanted to visit a church because for some reason hers was closed, and after asking around on the street, someone pointed her in the direction of ours. She loved sacrament meeting, really enjoyed the English Sunday school class with our English speaking members, and said she’s going to try to come every week! We got to give her a Book of Mormon and explain a little bit about our church, but more importantly we exchanged phone numbers and we planned on meeting this week. How sick is that?

I tried to think of something funny that happened this week to write about, but all the miracles kind of drowned out the funny stories so sorry not sorry haha. I really enjoyed a quote we heard in church on Sunday from a speaker who said, „We need to first love ourselves before we can love our neighbor as we love ourselves.“ As commanded, we need to love our neighbor as ourselves—we can’t do that if we don’t love ourselves. I just figured that was a cool thought to share.

some monument of a dude with a gun, found it fitting

These r not the missionaries u are looking 4 

when there are no open seats 😫

anotha monument ne?

Enjoy your weeks, my sons

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

Zone Conference September 2017

Berlin and Neubrandenburg Zone Conference September 2017

„Er duscht dich“

Moin,

There’s been so much crap the past 5 days, I will now use the form of bullet points as an attempt to make it all known.

• I said goodbye to some legendary families in Brandenburg

The Osbecks, my legends

• I took a tea candle light bath, quite relaxing might I say

My lit bath--last night in Brandenburg

• Traveling to Hamburg 

Goodbye, my legends

• In Hamburg, we were hit by a huge storm, they called it „Xavier“ you can look it up. The storm killed 6 people in northern Germany and 1 lady in Hamburg

• The storm basically stopped all movement of public transportation in and around Hamburg

Hamburg craziness--the main screen was totally blank 

• We were almost hit by a falling branch going out to check out the big tree that fell down

• We served with a very interesting man at the Tafel, who will only call us by our first names and loved controversial questions about the church

• We saw 2 car crashes on the same corner on the same day

• We saw 3 busses in an accident in which they all had destroyed fronts and lots of police

• We put our friend Richmond on baptismal date, for the 28^th of October, super sick lesson about Christ visiting the Americas and about the restoration

• We met with another few African legends

• We played soccer one morning and the people we played with kicked the ball so hard it broke a window of the stake center

• After soccer we went home and showered and while I was showering the Hausmeister under us came up and asked if all is good, because we don’t usually shower during the day, and Elder Hillyard meant to say „er duscht sich“ which means he’s showering himself; but said rather „er duscht dich“ which means he’s showering you

• Georg, another investigator of ours, is also being baptized on the 28th with our friend Richmond

• We sat next to a guy on the S Bahn who had some Arabic letters on his phone, so I peeked over and read that it was Persian, so I used some of my amazing sign language to tell Elder Hillyard that, so we started speaking Persian to each other very not well. But then I made a mistake and the guy fixed my mistake and I got to „act all surprised” that he spoke Persian, and we introduced the church and the Book of Mormon and gave him a Persian one. We wrote down his number WRONG, sadly, but hopefully he’ll find the church somehow. He seemed quite interested

• This city is dope and the mission work here is going suuuuper well--I’m loving it

View from my Apartment

Hamburg Rathaus is siiiiiick man

chill half sphere seats in wormland

Well then that’s how it’s going here. The Lord is working miracles left and right and we get to reap the rewards of hard work. Stay thirsty my friends…

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

Tschüß, DDR

Well hello, glad to see you’re back.

I guess I will begin with some news about transfers. Well, my dudes, it looks like I’m going to Hamburg! My area is called Wilhelmsburg, it’s a ward, idk man this is gonna be super cool. I also am going to become a district leader, so that’s lit. My first district leader in the mission, Elder Pruett, will be in my district which means he was my first district leader, and I’ll be one of his last. Crazy stuff. I‘m super sad to be leaving this wonderful city and the amazing members here and I’m gonna miss them lots, but so is life my dudes.

Aside from that craziness, we received a wonderful text on Tuesday morning that read „Hallo ich bin Brandenburg“ (hello I am Brandenburg; he meant I am in Brandenburg) although we didn’t have this number saved in our phone, we were without doubt it was our legend, Hasan. We had a lesson and headed to the church where Hasan made us some delicious food, and we got to work on our Persian a lot with him. Wednesday, he was here as well and made food for our whole district after district meeting and that was cool. He’s a very pure soul.

Tschüss my legend 😭

Hasan came with us to Sister Musehold's, both legends

hassaaaaannnnnnnnnnnn

Elder Koerper and I went on Tausch this week. We were in the MTC together, but he is like 100 times more legendary out here. We got a call early in the morning on our Tausch from a member who needed some help moving things out of his apartment, so we did that and had a quick random lesson. How sick. Then I got to teach him the ways of serving at the Tafel, and then right as we met back up with our comps, he talked to a deaf person using his skills in German sign language.

our weird district

Well shoot guys that’s about it from our week. General conference was awesome as usual and very sad to hear of the passing of Elder Hales from the quorum of the 12 apostles. One of my favorite parts was from Sister Oscarson’s talk about instead of trying to change the world, we need to start close to us, aka our family and close friends. And how she talked about when we go to a church meeting or activity, instead of asking ourselves „what can I take out of this activity?“, we should ask the question „who needs me today?“ because there will always be someone who would benefit from us reaching out to them. Something to put you in deep thought for today.

alright see ya

Elder Glenn JohnsonKirche Jesu Christi
Plauer Straße 11d
Brandenburg an der Havel 14770
Deutschland​

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