2017-01-26 Trainer and Trainee Conference

President and Sister Fingerle celebrated their 26^th wedding anniversary with a conference for the new missionaries at the mission home, and, of course, with flowers.

Apparently the Birthday Boy wanted to stand out. He's the only one NOT wearing his jacket!! He shares his birthday with the Mission President's Anniversary! Lots of celebrating this week on the 26th!! (Only Sister Fingerle is wearing shoes...)

Goodbye, Meth Lab

Hallo everyone!! 

I hope you all had nothing short of a fantastic week, because that's exactly what i had. This week, on Tuesday, we were blessed with the opportunity to deep clean our apartment, which was much needed for us. It had needed it for a while, but we just never had the time (or the interest), and now that we didn't have a choice, we decided to go ham on it, until this baby was sparkling. And that's exactly what we did. I don't know if i previously stated it or not, but up to this point, our bathroom was someone equivalent to the look of a meth lab, and that is no more. I mean I would eat off the ground in there, it's so nice. It's kind of like we moved different apartments, how clean it is. So goodbye, meth lab.

Anywho, also this week we got the chance to go to Berlin, for a meeting just for trainers and trainees. We had to wake up at 4:15am in order to catch our train in time, so that was great. We took a doubledecker bus from the train station to the mission home, so that was pretty sick, kinda felt like I was back in New York City. Our meeting was great, 6 hours long, but I learned a lot! After 13 weeks as a missionary, I finally got my iPad! It felt like an eternity basically, but I'm real excited to have it now. After the completion of this meeting, me and Elder Mehr had been recommended to try Mac's Kebap, which apparently has the best Döner in all of East Germany, and lets say we were not disappointed. It was truly amazing, but I think the Döner laden in Oldenburg still takes the cake in this one. 

Mac's Kebap, aka the best Döner in East Germany

Speaking of cake, I have had SO much of it in the past couple days. Thursday was my birthday, weird that I'm finally 19, but I got an Oreo ice cream cake (just like my mom made me every year) from the Senior couple, the Stewarts, that are in our area. It was bomb. Also Elder Mehr somehow baked a cake without me realizing that he was baking a cake, and surprised me with candles and everything, and it was actually a pretty bomb cake too. And lastly, a sweet lady from our ward came by and dropped off a cake for me yesterday after church, so that gives you just an idea of how much cake I've had in the past 3 days.

My comp rocks

The next day after this, we were on our way to an eating appointment we had and I left my bag on the bus! We tried to catch it and find it, but we had no luck. I had a lot of important stuff in there, like my Geistlichenausweis, 50 euros, my missionary handbooks, and some other stuff. We went to the main bus station to see what we could do, and they recommended checking back there on Monday at 11, so we will be going later today to see if someone hopefully turned it in, and if not, its gonna be tough to replace some of this stuff. I'm really hoping someone turned it in though.

(He did go back on Monday and someone had turned in his missionary bag with nothing missing! He is truly blessed!)

This week was the end of the transfer, which means transfer calls! Me and Elder Mehr were a little worried for ours, because we didn't want to be separated. But luckily we are staying here together in Oldenburg, and we celebrated by having the most luxurious dinner. We had Mac and Cheese, this stuff he makes called Slop (basically the inside to a breakfast burrito, but no tortilla), and some hot cheetos we received from a dope package. We ate like kings to end this transfer off, and to start our next one, where we will be speaking 24/7 German with eachother. I'm a little afraid of this, but more excited to see how my German improves at the end of the transfer.

Haha so a funny but also cool spiritual moment this week, I'm not sure if I mentioned it last week, but me and Elder Mehr have this 1000 piece puzzle of Dresden, Germany, that we are very proud of. As we were cleaning, Elder Mehr has the great idea to try and see if it will work if he tries vacuuming the puzzle up. Of course it does, and we lose a piece of our puzzle to the vacuum. We opened the vacuum up and couldn't find it, then we went and emptied the bag out in the trash can, still couldn't find anything. We had looked for this one piece for about 20 minutes, and we decided, being missionaries, to pray for guidance as to where it was. We then offered a humple prayer to receive help in finding this puzzle piece, and I kid you not, after the prayer was over and we went to check the trash again, it was sitting right there on top of the trash! There's no way we could've missed that. But it just goes to show, it doesn't matter how small or simple (or stupid) your problem is, God is always there and ready to help.

Anyways, as you can probably tell, it was a great week! Another transfer here in Oldenburg, and I'm basically gonna die soon I'm so old. I hope you all have another great week, I will talk to you all next Monday!! 

Lichterfelde Ost Berlin Bahnhof!

Downtown Hannover

Tschüß!
Elder Johnson

Germany Berlin Mission

Bürgerstraße 61

Oldenburg 26123 

Germany

KEEP SMILING!!!

Keep smiling everyone!! 

We found this mat when we were out finding, so obviously we used it as a prime photo taking spot. Haha but yeah this week was pretty good! We had a lot of our appointments fall through, which is kind of lame. BUT we are nevertheless staying optimistic! 

KEEP SMILING!!

This week we met with one of our less active members, Viktor, and his girlfriend and newborn. We had been trying to reach out to him for a while, and we finally got in contact and got to set up an appointment to meet with them! It was an awesome meeting, they speak Spanish and only Viktor speaks a little German, so we taught like a half Spanish half German lesson, which was awesome. Then his Frau asked us for a priesthood blessing for something she needs, and they asked us to do it in English because she can understand that better than German, and we speak it better than German haha. So that was awesome, and then they made it to church the next day which rocked! The blessings of church attendance are so real and apparent in our lives!

Yeah but other than that, we did a lot of finding and knocking on doors! Our only successes were all of our really good rejections, the ruder the people are to us, the better it is. Haha the great thing is how we just keep smiling and "Geh Weiter" haha. If you haven't caught on yet, there is a link between all of my emails, it's a code. Also, when we were knocking on doors in an apartment that had been particularly higher in rejections, we saw this mat on our way down and it was very fitting for our situation so we took a picture haha. 

Trozdem, I hope you all have a great week, keep smiling.

Our bomb cat and dog puzzle

We love cool graffiti!

We found a frozen creek before church, so naturally we tested if it would support us

SICK Oldenburg graffiti we found when finding

Elder Glenn Johnson
Germany Berlin Mission
Bürgerstraße 61
Oldenburg 26123 

Germany

"Geh Weiter!"

​Guten Tag everyone. 

Man it is truly lit over here in good ole Oldenburg. This week was pretty dope! It started off with the Mission President coming to our church building for zone interviews, so me and Elder Mehr got the privilege of setting everything up. Those were dope, afterwards, we went out with the Mission President and went and met with a family and it was crazy, President Fingerle is an amazing teacher. It was a little intimidating at first teaching in German with our mission president, but I loosened up and it was a great lesson!

Also this week, when we were at our Train Station, we were approached by this dude preaching the Catholic church. Haha he had a bunch of pamphlets and he tried to make us take one, so I offered him a switch, his thing for our card. He then proceeded to go on a 10 minute rant on why our church is wrong and that we should get our whole church to be baptized into the Catholic church, his only reasoning, was because the Catholic church was older. Haha it was a good conversation, we didn't argue at all or anything because we're out here doing the same thing he is! It was a good experience haha. 

On Friday this week, we were waiting for our train to get here, and there was a very interesting homeless guy sitting down yelling a lot of random crazy stuff to himself in German, and it was quite frankly pretty funny haha. When the train arrived, we got in and he came in too! We were confused how he has a ticket, because they are not very cheap, but we just whatevered it. 

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Then like 10 minutes later, the ticket lady comes by and asks him for his ticket, and we just heard him yelling things like, "That is my name!" and​, "That is my ticket!" which obviously it wasn​'t. Then she told him he has to get off, and he started cussing her out the worst I've seen here yet haha. He said some terrible things, also threatening her that in 100 years he is coming back to get her? Haha he was crazy but he got off before she had to do something worse hahaha.

Alright, and now for the explanation of the Title of today​'s email. It all started today on our walk to church. We were actually on time to our bus stop, and so when we got there, there was a tall man sitting down waiting for the bus. Since the bus didn​'t come for like 10 minutes, we decided to just walk to the bus station. When we started walking, this guy got up immediately and followed. He was following really close behind and he was like nonstop mumbling under his breath, which we found kind of weird, but we didn't think too much of it. We decided to slow down just to see if he would pass in front of us and keep walking, but no, of course he stopped right behind us and mumbled louder the words​, "Geh weiter," hence the title. SO he basically told us to keep walking. By now we're getting kind of scared so we kept walking, and I told Elder Mehr that we should stop at this upcoming bus stop, and if he stopped with us, it was about to go down. So we get up to it, and stop, and of course HE STOPS. I was seriously ready to throw down. Haha not really​, but I was about to ask him if there was something we could help him with, but he stopped for a couple seconds, and then just started running to the bus station. Seriously the weirdest/scariest experience, and I am 100% sure that the Lord had a hand in the fact that we are safe and sound right now. Seriously this dude was crazy haha. 

Other than those couple experiences, this week was normal!!! Haha please pray for us out here in Germany, there are some crazy people out here. Well I hope you are all loving life and feel extremely welcome to slide in to my emails. You know what it is, and stay warm.

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​​1. we brought our new convert to enjoy the greatness that is Mums Diner​​

2. Idk we found this and joked about buying a water bed for our apartment and seeing if the mission would reimburse it haha​

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​​3. Found some cool graffiti, took a pic with it, simple as that​​

​--

Elder Glenn Johnson
Germany Berlin Mission
Bürgerstraße 61

Oldenburg 26123 

Germany

The Week of the Grand Re-Shrekening

I don't usually insert text on Elder Glenn Johnson's emails, but I am "My Missionary's Mom," and I just couldn't not do it today.

Those of you who read his letter last week, might remember he mentioned that he and a visiting Elder were doing splits (and Glenn was left in charge of Oldenburg because there are only 2 missionaries in Oldenburg). They handed out 6 Books of Mormon, which was highly unusual! Word got back to the Mission President, and he called Glenn​ early this morning to talk to him about it. The conversation was completely in German (Glenn has been in Germany for just under one month and the mission president was probably testing out Glenn's German). He asked Glenn if he could put Glenn's success story from last week in his weekly letter that he was sending out to the entire mission! 

WOOHOO! That's my missionary! 

In addition, the Mission President just did interviews in Oldenburg and decided to stay overnight and work with the missionaries directly. This story may be continued next week...

Hola Familie and Friends. 

If you are wondering what the subject of this email means, I'm sorry. Haha nah I'm just kidding I will explain. So our district is obsessed with Shrek, because how couldn't you be? Along with that, our favorite place to eat, known as Mom's Diner, has been closed since the middle of December. This place has the best American food in all of Germany no joke. They have the best hamburgers ever, and we had been without it since mod-December, we barely survived. BUT on January 6th, they reopened. And you know we all celebrated the Grand Re-Shrekening of Mom's Diner this week with an American music playlist, a pool tournament, and everything else American you could ever think of. You could definitely say we were all properly re-shrekened. 

The Famous Mom's Diner

Yesterday, we went to a baptism that was in another area in our district so we went to it, and when we went back to their apartment there before, we took an elevator. Hahaha some of us began to jump because its a really old elevator and we're a bunch of 19 year old guys and THE ELEVATOR GOT STUCK!! Haha it stopped and we were waiting for the door to open but it never did and we realized we were trap​ped between two floors. Hahaha soo we used the emergency button and the firemen got their 45 minutes later to pry the door open so we could climb out!! It was hilarious haha but definitely a bad idea on their part, lol I for sure wasn't involved..... 

So aside from the reopening and the elevator, not too much this week was very eventful, we went knocking on a lot of doors, got a lot of rejections, but there was this one door where I told Elder Mehr that I was going to talk this time, and not take no as an answer. So we rang the doorbell, and a nice lady answered it and usually I would start off by talking about how we are from the church and have a short message or something like that, but this time right in the moment I just told her that we are from our church and we would like to share how families and be together forever and that stuff. She, like most other Germans, told us that she didn't have time. So, as I had previously said, I asked her when we could come back, and she said next week at a certain time, so it actually worked!! We are excited to go visit with her.

Lastly, we got to be apart of a miracle this morning! So me and Elder Mehr left a little late from our house this morning, so we had to like sprint to our bus stop to make it on time (which is like a half mile away)! We got there too late and we missed our bus to the bus station thing so we had to walk/run like a mile there, and we missed that bus too!! So the next bus didn't come for like an hour and we can't be late to church!! So we decided to take a different bus and get off before it goes the wrong way and then walk like a long time to get to the church. Then when we got off and were figuring out which way we needed to go, this random van comes and pulls over right in front of us, and we realized it was one of the families from our ward! The crazy thing is that only 5 people in our ward drive to church, and we were far away from the church too, we got to be on time!!

Anyways I hope you all have a great week and enjoyed my stupid stories from this week, 

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I promise I​'ll give you all some better ones next week. 

Love you guys!!

  First Snow wearing new German birthday jacket​ 

(he now has multiple jackets...but had to have this one)

Graffitti:  "Racism Kills"

Solved his first Rubik's Cube​

Frohe Neues Jahr!!! (Happy New Year)

Shopping on Cobblestone Streets on P-day

What is good fam and friends. 

I hope you all had a good New Years and made some awesome goals that will last a week or so before you give up, because that's what new years is all about right?? Nah I'm just playing but I hope you all had some awesome fireworks and food and stuff because unfortunately we are not allowed to do fireworks as missionaries...weird rule, right? What can go wrong with a bunch of 18 year old dudes playing with explosives? Beats me...

On Tuesday of this past week, we played soccer with a member of the ward and some of his friends! It was nuts and I never realized how bad I was at 'fußball' until I actually played it. Haha for real these guys were like pros and the coach of our team kept yelling at me in German to do a certain thing so I learned a couple useful vocabulary words...and probably a couple that I shouldn't repeat lol. But it was really fun and hopefully they still invite us next week even though I am not that good.

This week was really good! Elder Sinclair, from Chester, England came down to Oldenburg on splits with me for a few days, so I was in charge of Oldenburg! It was a little scary but we were fine, actually, on Wednesday when we went knocking on doors, we gave out 3 Books of Mormon in German and 1 in Arabic to people who were interested in learning more! We also taught a walk in lesson, and gave out 100 pass along cards. The next 2 days, we went out again and gave out 2 more Books of Mormon to other potential investigators, and had 2 more walk in lessons! The work is really moving out here and it's awesome to see all the success we're having.

But yeah, not much happening here other than that! Silvester (New Years Eve) Is a crazy day for Germans, so we are told to be home by 6 so that we don't get hurt or anything bad happens to us so we got to chill and watch some fireworks outside of our window for New Years and that was still pretty awesome. Also, I had to introduce myself during church on Sunday and that was super scary because I know everyone in the congregation was just making fun of my German the whole time!! I left them with an awesome scripture, I hope it made sense, in Moroni 7:33 "Und Christus hat gesagt: Wenn ihr Glauben an mich habt, werdet ihr Macht haben, alles zu tun, was mir ratsam ist." So when we have faith in Christ, we can do anything that is expedient in Him. Never forget that!!! 

Have a beautiful week to start of your new years. 

Love you guys.

​Elder Glenn Johnson
Germany Berlin Mission

Bürgerstraße 61

Oldenburg 26123 

Germany

​​An idea of what most of the streets here look like

A world war memorial at our train station. it says : In Memory of the citizens of Oldenburg, who have fallen in World Wars.