Elder Glenn Johnson: Livin' the Dream in Berlin, Germany: We ran over a person?

Greetings, friends.

We had yet another busy week here on the Havel. We were blessed with the opportunity to have an eating appointment with our legendary Russian family--and Shrek 4 in Russian was playing in the background the whole time--and that was just a whole other experience entirely.

Spiel Abend (game night) brought a funny experience. First off, we had like 7 or something people there idk it was awesome. That's a great way to grow friendships with the members who don't come to church as often as they should and through that friendship and trust they want to come, because it's dope and a good idea to go to church on Sundays. WELL, my brother in the work of the Lord, my companion, the Elder Oliver thought it would be fun if we made everyone spaghetti; so that's what he did. We are low budget missionaries, like most others, so we can't afford this Italy name brand crap for spaghetti so we went Ja! brand. For you Americans, the Ja! brand is similar to like Great Value or Kirkland signature. Not terrible, and cheap as heck. Well it still tasted pretty good, too and a member decided to share his thoughts. He compliments the cooking, but then goes "BUT" and begins to just destroy the ingredients Elder Oliver used. Canned tomatoes? Choke. Not enough sauce? Choke. Well, after a good minute or two of Elder Oliver taking his lashings, the member says "all in all, I'd give it a 3" just to twist the knife. Of course that's a new quote for us to have fun with.

Thursday, we were quite blessed with some miracles, it was quite a treat. Earlier in the day, we had a fun conversation in a store with these kids who were into minecraft. Boom. Two automatic new friends because of that beautiful game. Later, we had some young revelation to meet with a certain older member, and we made an appointment out with the legend. On the way there was just God's gameboard to see how many miracles he could throw at us. He hit us with the first one, as we are on the tram. A great friend of ours of the Afghanistanian background comes on the same tram as us and comes and sits next to us, and we just go off right there speaking Persian with him without shame. Well we had lost contact with him and us seeing him was great because we made out a few appointments to work on our Farsi with him. Alright nice move, God.

BUT it's not over; oh no. As we got off the tram, it started raining unbelievably hard. We start walking to our appointment and see an older man walking home with walking sticks very slowly, without an umbrella. So we go over and ask if we can walk him home, while protecting him from the rain, and we ended up having a great conversation and most importantly got to show him that we're here to serve others, not just knock on doors. During the walk with him, we experienced yet another miracle, and it was seeing the dad from the Arabic family we used to meet with! He was just done with work and was super excited to see us, and we were able to get in contact with him again. How dope is that?

selfie with Martin Luther church in the background? ✅

Okay well today was definitely the most interesting pday I’ve had in a long time..... I guess just to sum it up, we ran over a human being and saw the church where Martin Luther did the deed. Nah, I’ll go more into it for ya. Well, it all started as we embark on our trip to Wittenberg, the city where Martin Luther posted his 95 theses. Not even 5 minutes after leaving the train station in Bradenburg, we feel a huge bump and then the train just SLAMS on the brakes. Then we sit there for about 10 minutes absolutely clueless as to what just happened, and eventually we’re informed that our train was in a Personunfall, also known as an accident involving a human and our train; law of lugnuts, am I right? Then comes a 2 and a half hour wait, as fire, paramedics, police, criminal police, an airvac helicopter, and a police helicopter all come and do their business until we were finally able to get out and all cram into a bus to Potsdam. When something like that happens, deutsche Bahn just like shuts down and is useless. Haha because once there, every train was delayed, so we had to take an S Bahn to Berlin. Then, we ran to the service center and asked if we would be able to take an IC train that left not long after, or we’d have to wait another hour for a slower train and we'd be even later to Wittenberg; and since we were in the train that the accident happened, we were allowed to take the better train and had to run down there to catch that one. After a 2 hour trip turned into 5 and a half hours, we FINALLY made it there.

police helicopter. They weren't fans of our train crash

helpin us out the train :-)

goodbye you devil

Well that was a super dope experience to see the place where the reformation started, how dope. AND I was reunited with the coolest dude on this planet, Elder Wright!!! We had a wonderful time, just like the good ole times in the MTC. Not having much time there, resulted in us missing our train back, so we had to wait 2 hours for the next one; so we just checked some more stuff out. Then we get in our train back to Berlin, and are yet again delayed!!! Like deutsche Bahn has to chill today haha.