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