Elder Glenn Johnson: Livin' the Dream in Berlin, Germany: 🎄🎄Frohe Weinnachten🎄🎄

Hello awesome family and friends!!!! Not sure how many of you still read these, but I´ll keep em coming anyways. I hope you all had a cute freaking week. And an awesome Christmas!!! Christmas is so cute in Germany, some interesting parts: The actual day where everyone opens all their presents is Heiligabend, aka Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day and the day after Christmas are all days where everyone stays at home and spends time with family, so those days we can´t proselyte. BUT our mission president allowed us to watch Disney Animated or Church movies during these days! So cool, because a lot of other missions don´t get that luxury.

This week was awesome....I gave out my first Book of Mormon! So Elder Mehr and I were out street contacting this past Wednesday, in the Downtown Oldenburg area where the Christmas Market is, and it was cold and rainy, just like almost all the days here haha. So the people here don't really love to talk about God, because a lot of them think that they don't need him, etc., but it was especially hard on Wednesday because it was cold and rainy, and everyone was in a rush to get their Christmas shopping done. So about 90% of the responses we would get from these people, would be something negative. Some people let us talk for a little bit, but other than that, we weren't having much luck. I started the talking with people for the first time, which is freaking scary, but it's pretty fun too. Anyways, we were about done, ready to head back to go get some lunch, and we decided we would talk to one more person. We walked up to this Man, introduced ourselves and asked if he would like a small message about Christmas, and he was interested! We talked with him for about 20 minutes right there, about the importance of the Book of Mormon and Christ and all that good stuff and I gave him the Book of Mormon I had and he said he would read it, and would love to meet with us after Christmas! All in freaking German too. Crazy how everything works out on the spot like that. But yeah, his name is Oliver, and his parents investigated the church before and named him after Oliver Cowdery, so that's a plus.

The Train Station

Oldenburg Christmas Market and famous St. Lambert Cathedral in the background

Funny story, me and Elder Mehr were at this nice German family's home for lunch yesterday, and when we had finished with the food, they went to go get ice cream for us like most Germans do, and when they brought it out, there was this odd egg-shaped thing right in the middle of the ice cream. When they put it in front of us, Elder Mehr leaned over and whispered "Some Germans like putting frozen eggs in their ice cream" and wow I was gonna freak hahaha. Since you have to eat everything Germans give you, I was preparing myself to just down it all and get rid of the taste with the rest of the ice cream, I was so nervous. When I took the first bite of this unknown substance that I thought was an egg, I realized it was just a frozen peach!! Hahah I was so relieved and it was delicious lol.

But other than that, this week was pretty awesome! I'm gonna miss the Christmas time, especially because of how cool it is here in Germany, and the people are more in the mood to talk about God during this time. But it's all good the work will go forth! I love and miss you all, have a beautiful week.