Think

Merhaba boys and girls nasilsin. çokiyi? iyi.

Vell (cue Oakys accent), this week was interesting for sure. Funny story to start you boys off today. I was blessed to go on splits with the Australian nephew of Steve Irwin (not really, would be cool though) and that was great. It’s hard to remember he’s Australian as I talk to him about American things and it just goes right over his head. Anyways we were on a bus during our exchange, and the bus gets on the freeway for some reason. We were the only people still standing up, because there were no 2-seaters for us both to sit down, so we stayed standing and he was telling me quite an intriguing story. After a few minutes of driving the bus driver gets on his intercom thing and says in a heavy heavy German accent „Could yoü please sit down so sat vee can drrife a little bit fastah?“ so that was awesome. We were thinking it probably took him a few minutes to look up all those words because we were already on the Autobahn for about 5 minutes before he said that. Germans and English, man, wonderful combination.

Tausch with the credible hunter himself, Elder Denny

Oh man, we had an interesting lesson this week. We brought one of our Afghani friends of the church to our Persian speaking members house, and that didn’t play out too well. This man, being quite defensive of the Qur’an and his beliefs, thought our words were absolute nonsense. He had a very hard time grasping the concept of „believing without seeing,“ as he argued very hard that there must be proof of the Book of Mormon (which there is, but it’s useless telling them to him) or there’s not truth whatsoever. I think my favorite part, though, was when he started on one of his rants earlier in the lesson, and it started getting heated between literally only himself. But as he was going off, he stopped, looked at our Persian member and says „One moment. Do you have some tea or something? We’re going to need some tea,“ in the most sassy way ever—it was quite amazing. Unfortunately not much came out of the lesson except that we convinced him to give it a try and read a good amount in the book before he shoots down that idea.

I was back in Berlin this past week for exchanges as well and that was great. Fun to be back in that apartment in Tiergarten since my stay there back in the legendary days. We’re back in contact with Faiz, working on meeting with him again, but it hasn’t worked out yet. We won’t give up on him though.

Interesting last names at a place we rang at. Oldenburg is a dope last name, Haar (hair) is also quite an interesting last name. 

Something I found quite interesting this week, was at a lesson with Jason, our new convert. We had a lesson and read in the Book of the Mormons with him (what most Germans call it) and had an overall good lesson. Once we were finished he prayed for the closing, and right before he ended the prayer he said, „Well Heavenly Father, I wish you also a beautiful evening,“ which was interesting. It was funny at first because that’s not usually said in prayers (at least from what I’ve heard) but why? Sometimes during our prayers we can focus too much on ourselves and things we want/need, but maybe God would like us to be thinking about Him as well as ourselves. Just an interesting thought, carry on now with your day and try to be less selfish next time you pray.

Sick. Peace aüt

it’s getting chilly here -12 degrees this coming week

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

I Willn‘t Do That

Well hello there, nice to be back with you on quite the sunny surprise of a pday here in Hamburg.

So you’re wondering what I did this week? Most likely not, but you get to find out anyways. Probably the highlight of my week was the beginning. After having some meetings and an interview, we hopped on a train towards Braunschweig, where the other one had exchanges with the Turkish speaking elder there, Elder Miller, from Gilbert Arizona. Unfortunately for him, he went to Higley High School, but as we talked more we found out we were at the same music festival about 3 summers ago, pretty neat. Anyways, he was a legend but more importantly was that I saw my treasure Elder Hofeling, the only person on this living earth to have taken more L‘s at a ZoKo than thought humanly possible. He is all over the keyboard. We had quite the fun time catching up after all these years since the days of the reign of the Oldenburg district. We were also blessed to take part in their District meeting, which includes a district of literally only legends. We’ve got Elder Searle, the fearless „1 goal is enough“ legend district leader, then his companion the one and only Elder Wehrend, from whom myths are written, wie herrlich sind die Beine, amazing man. Then we had the other two that I’ve previously described, and that was just the perfect recipe for an amazing district meeting, and rest of our exchange.

my legends, wehrend and hofeling #dreamdritt

oldenburggggggggg

On our way back home one day we were waiting for our S Bahn to take us home to Harburg, as the train across from us kinda stays at the platform for longer than usual. Then come 2 Deutsche Bahn Security people, who go in to the Bahn and rip out these two dudes who didn’t want to leave that train. At one point they were being carried by the back of the pants, no way that didn’t hurt, and after that the security brought out like 3 empty large bottles of vodka. Afterwards the guys kinda just gave up and decided to just sleep on the ground next to the train, probably their next best idea.

goodnight friends

Besides that, we had an English lesson with Rebecca the legend herself, and that was fun. I taught her all the important rules that most Americans forget like „willn‘t“ „you’re & your being freely interchangeable“ and a couple other good ones I forgot.

We also had a lesson with a man from Afghanistan which went quite well. He’s a little crazy, but there might be something there. We invited him to church, and he did end up coming during the last 15 minutes of church just to come tell us he’s feeling sick so he can’t come haha. لِگِند. The best news of our week was when our good friend Faiz got back into contact with us. We were quite worried for him that something happened and somehow he couldn’t get ahold of us but everything’s okay. He is dealing with family problems and needed some alone time to deal with it. We are grateful that he’s back with us and that we can now continue helping him towards baptism. The Lord does miracles.

In the Book of Mormon Book of Moroni chapter 7:29, we read And because he hath done this, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men. We still see miracles daily. Pray for yourself to be able to see the miracles that we could be able to see every day and there will be a difference.

me 

Cya

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

Fasching

Merhaba boys and girls,

Great to see you back. The beginning of this week was sad because it was time for Elder Hillyard to bid himself goodbye to some of the greats that we have here in Hamburg. We were also blessed with an awesome member of our ward, Beccy, who made us some awesome insanely comfy blankets with freaking dog paws. Even though I was tempted to just sit down in a seat as I helped him get into his train to Berlin, it was time to say goodbye. RIP Elder Hillyard, he will be missed.

stupid ice taking my boy away (rip hillyard)

our legendary blankets (rip hillyard)

Other than that, I received later the new one called Morrell, and nothing too exciting happened that day. Friday we met with our legends Georg and Faiz. Georg is an interesting one to teach now. We’ve been teaching him for more than 6 months now, so he knows about everything that we teach to investigators, so it’s not always too easy to figure out a lesson for him. We focused on the temple this time, and he’s quite excited to be able to make it over there after his baptism. With Faiz, we had also a great lesson. We finished the rest of the points that we needed to teach him, focusing on priesthood and the temple, and the importance of going to church. He accepted it all really great, Brother Troke also helped greatly in our lesson, and it was just awesome overall. The next day he had his baptismal interview! Of course he destroyed it and we were all really excited for him to be baptized this next Saturday. Unfortunately he didn’t make it to church yesterday so we’re going to have to move the baptism back a week or two :/ but that’s alright. More important that he’s 100% ready and prepared than to be baptized quicker.

our legend Faiz (rip hillyard)

We were asked to help a few ladies from the Tafel that we work with to help them clean out and take some stuff to the dump out of one of their apartments and it was pretty....let’s say...not too hygienic lol. Luckily I had worn gloves cuz it was cold—because otherwise I’d probably be home by now with a case of every cancer there is. It was a fun time though, it’s always great to serve others and spread the love of Christ. Later that day, we had a ward activity called Fasching. Someone explained it to me and as best as I can remember they said it was a little similar to Mardi Gras, which helps me not at all because I’m Arizonan. Everyone dressed up in costumes and we played some fun games together. Overall a fun time.

On Saturday as we were walking home, I heard two people speaking English with each other nowhere near a place where one would usually hear English (i.e., train station, airport, tourist attractions) so I hit the legends with a „Hold up, where are you guys from?“ and we started a legendary conversation with some Brits from Manchester. Once we explained that we’re missionaries from the Mormon church, the man said, „Oh no not you guys. Your people attacked me in England“ (cue the trash Hillyard British accent) „Okay, well, maybe attacked isn’t the right word; but they never would leave me alone!“ And then they had to go take their dog for a walk and they were expecting someone soon so in other words they didn’t want to be „attacked“ by us either. Pretty funny experience, haha.

Anyways that’s about it for this week folks. I finished Genesis in the German bible just a few days ago and learning all about how legendary Moses is. I definitely recommend reading some scriptures, it’s.....Spa

.......

we conquered the moose (rip hillyard)

rip hillyard

BYE

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

Lily Exposed Me

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to extend you a warm welcome back.

You must be asking yourself, what’s happening with the legendary companionship that was Elders Johnson and Hillyard of the Wilhelmsburg area in Hamburg? Well, apparently it’s the will of our leaders that we get split. Elder Hillyard is being ripped away from me and being taken to Neukölln, a suburb of Berlin. Good thing he learned enough Turkish here to fend for himself out there in the Ghettos of Berlin. I am being tied down here and given a new elder called Morrell. The legends are being separated though after a good 5 months and it’s just downhill from here. Just kidding, haha, but we’ll see how it goes with the new companion and everything.

Legendary District

Other than that, we had a great week. We had an awesome lesson with Faiz, where we focused only on tithing—what it means, where the law comes from, and why we do it. To our surprise, he didn’t have anything against it, understood it very well, and agreed to pay it after he’s baptized. Much more legendary gets it not. Unfortunately he didn’t make it to church, because he pulled a Hillyard and broke his screen and couldn’t use his phone so he didn’t know where the church was.

Chewy?

We had another couple good appointments this week, one in which something pretty funny happened. We had an eating appointment with our Bishop and his family yesterday, and it was time for us to give our little spiritual thought. Well as many of you don’t know, a member in Brandenburg gifted me a deck of magic cards and showed me a few magic tricks, the perfect way to lead in to the tricks of Satan and how to see them. Well I prepared for my magic trick before we started so nobody knew, I hid a card inside of a nearby book, to use as my final trick. Right as I am starting the magic for the family and their small kids, one of the little babies, Lily, is walking around doing some nonsense when she reaches for the book. Nervously, I reach over to kinda nonchalantly stop her, but there was no stopping her. She opened the book, revealing the card, exposing my trick. We all had a good long laugh over that one, and the rest of my tricks worked except that one haha.

my boy

Well folks that’s about all for this week, stay lit and have a lot of fun these next 7 days.

Bye

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

Arizonans..the new wannabe Utahns?

Welcome.

I feel to address first the subject of this email. Yesterday my companion, Elder Kevin Oliver Hillyard explained to me of his strong belief that „Arizonans are wannabe Utahns“. He explained further and narrowed it down to mostly Mesa and Gilbert have the wannabe Utahns, and this is all based off his judgement of the <20 citizens of Arizona he has met. I just thought this was the most absurd statement I’ve ever heard come from his mouth, so we had a good hour long friendly discussion on why he is absolutely wrong. You could say I won, as he at the end admitted that I was correct.

Anyways, great to have you all back. This week was a fun one for us. We had yet another Zone Conference, in which we learned that Elder Robert Nay and some other Römer guy created an app. It’s like a translation app for members of the church to help us when we meet people who don’t speak any normal languages like German, English, or Persian. It’ll be interesting to see the app start off and see if it works.

Hamburg and Neumünster Zones

After the conference, we had a great lesson with Georg, which President Fingerle asked if he could come to. After Georg roasted us a little bit, we had an awesome lesson about the Plan of Salvation and we were able to give him a sick blessing and it was overall awesome. The spirit was strong at our lesson.

Me, Elder Hillyard, Georg, and President Fingerle

We also had the blessing to have another appointment with Faiz this week. We went through a lesson we’ve already taught, but with pamphlets in his language, so that was great. He seemed to grasp the concept even better, and strengthen his faith. He is about halfway finished with the Book of Mormon too, which is awesome. He also told us that he’s doing really well with not drinking coffee. He said his friends and girlfriend are like what da heck you’re crazy! But he has told them his beliefs and not succumbed to peer pressure, which is an awesome miracle!

Anyways, no crazy storms or anything this week. We had a district Pday and me and Hillyard destroyed at volleyball like usual. We also find out this Saturday about transfers. It’s likely that Elder Hillyard leaves me, but we’re hoping to break the norm so he can finish his mission in the best city with the best companion he’ll ever have.

Anyways stay thirsty my friends, bye!

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

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Winter storm means madness

Belcome Frack Wiends,

Glad to see us all gathered together once again for a few words of information from the great city of Hamburg, Germany.

Scary Storm

This week was freaking cold. We were blessed with the opportunity to be hit with a winter storm called Friederike, but luckily we were in the mild part. Actually we heard that a couple people in Germany actually died because of the storm, and the train system was pretty messed up again like every time such a storm comes. All we got here was cold temps and lots of snow. Me and Elder Hillyard took advantage of the snow during one of our lunch breaks and made a snow man and had an epic snowball fight. Like usual though I destroyed him and, as winner, I got to drop a snowball as big as I could make on him as he made a snow angel.

Taking some time to play in the snow

We spent an entire day of the week going out to small villages where the bus lines are very seldom, so we spent a lot of time waiting. All of the referrals we had of people that were apparently interested in learning more about the church, actually had no idea what our church was, had never gone on the internet, and had no interest to learn more. But it is okay, because now we don’t need to waste time going out there and not getting an answer. Something pretty good came out of one of the days we were in a small village place trying to visit an earlier investigator (that wasn’t home). We were out, after trying his house, doing some door knocking and street contacting, and we saw a tv store playing a handball game, so we stopped and watched for a bit. Let me just tell you, handball seems like a crazy weird but fun game. Anyways, afterwards we saw this guy walking our way, talked to him, and he had legit interest to learn more. We got to talk to him all the way back to the train station, at the train station waiting for the train, and the train ride home. We got his information and hope something good will come out of it.

Our two baptismal candidates, Faiz and Georg, are doing awesome. Georg gave us great news, he got everything figured out so that he can finally be baptized on March 31st! It’s in a while, but the important thing is he hasn’t given up and really understands the importance of baptism. Faiz is also still excited to be baptized, and his baptism will be on February 11^th most likely. Legend broke his finger playing basketball for the professional team he’s on, but that won’t stop him.

Well sons, it was great to write to you once again. I’m really excited for the new First Presidency of the Church and what greatness will come out of it. This is the true church. Peace out!️

Our church building got tagged...

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

Von meinem iPad gesendet

Hafen Station

Greetings fellow weekly readers.

Welcome to our next chapter of this 104 chapter novel of my mission.

Well, you guessed it sons; another busy as heck week. It started off with us meeting with a referral of a friend from Afghanistan, who was quite interested in receiving a Bible in Persian. We met with him, I started to explain what we are and what we do in Farsi, and after I say that we’re from America, he says „You’re American?“ in an impressive American accent. He then explains to us how he was a translator for American troops in Afghanistan, so can speak fairly good English. We then jumped right on that opportunity and introduced the Bible and Book of Mormon in the best language in the world. He was sincerely pretty interested, which was awesome. Later that day me and Elder Hillyard destroyed some chumps in volleyball.

We also met ourselves with Faiz this week, our Indonesian legend who is a basketball baller. We had another great lesson with him going through the commandments and what God’s expectations are for us, and he was down to work on following them all, so we were super happy about that. He then continued afterwards to break Elder Hillyard’s ankles every time he had the ball.

We received a referral from an Elder in the London England mission, who spoke with someone from our area online who would love a visit from us. This guy lives about an hour away from us in a small village outside of Hamburg. So we head on out to go visit him after treating ourselves with wonderful Döner with 6 different sauce selections. The bus ride was 45 minutes, and then we waited for a different bus, that went classic and fell out and never came for some reason. We were left with the choice to either wait for an hour for the next train home, or walk an hour to his house. Being the bockfull missionaries that we are, we choose the walk in -1 degree weather. It was cold, but we were excited because we knew the Lord wouldn’t let us do all this for nothing...we get there, ring once....no answer. Maybe he didn’t hear it. Ring twice...... still no answer. After about the 5th ring we gave up and decided to knock on the doors in the area, from which we didn’t have much success. Right before we started the long walk back to the train station, we rang one more time, and the guy’s parents were there. They had no clue what we were talking about but were interested in what we do, so we got the chance to introduce ourselves. The father said, „well I’m a lost cause, you won’t have any success with me, but good luck with my son.“ And we came back yesterday and he wasn’t there again. Hopefully one of these days we’ll get in contact with him.

Stade is a cute city 

President Monson was a man who learned the lesson to never refuse to act to a prompting from the Holy Ghost. He has had an insane amount of experiences where he followed just the smallest prompting, and became a life saver or a soul saver. He and his amazing ways of living will be truly missed, but he’s in a much happier place now.

when you’re freezing at a member's house and find a blanket that matches your personality 

Probably one of the hugest blasphemies I’ve ever seen. This painting is in a train station here and says „United We Stand, Divided We Fall“ on a picture with the American flag and the twin towers.

an ICE passing through, along with a surprise at the end

Well thanks for readin' that’s all folks 👍

Elder Glenn Johnson

Kirche Jesu Christi

Heckengang 55

21079 Hamburg

Germany

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