7/19/25
We’ve had such an interesting week, I’m excited to tell you all about it. Let’s get started!
We began our week with church in the Reykjavik 1st branch on Sunday. Of course we needed a picture of Kathryn & Dana with the Christus statue in our foyer. It’s such a beautiful work of art and helps us remember the true purpose of our church attendance is to worship our Savior Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father.
It was fun to introduce them to our friends and also to have them join us at our monthly potluck dinner. We had a good crowd attend including many friends and visitors.
Sunday evening we took a walk to the waterfalls just a couple of miles from our apartment. We love showing off Iceland and this walk is one of our favorite local places to go. Who doesn’t love a waterfall or two in the middle of the city?!
All sorts of flowers are blooming and the air is fragrant with their scents. The lupins are nearly finished but now we are finding roses and fireweed and all sorts of other beauties popping up to take their places. Iceland is putting on her mid-summer look and it is pretty lovely!
Monday began with the usual institute cooking. . .
. . . and continued with a few hours in downtown Reykjavik to show Kathryn & Dana the sights. We had temperatures over 70 degrees F, 20 degrees C, throughout the afternoon and it was hot! I’m guessing it was probably hotter where you were, but for Iceland this was a legitimate heatwave.
We started our outing at Hallgrimskirkja, enjoying the bell tower & the architecture.
We walked through town enjoying the shops and the sunshine.
While the kids and I were shopping Todd made a few friends. He had a visit with Jess Sceili & his son Grant, members of the church who live in Castle Rock, Colorado. They are on vacation in Iceland and noticed Todd’s missionary badge. They happen to live in the same area as one of our young missionaries, Luke Benzley, so they sent their greetings to him through Todd. Maybe one day Grant will come on a mission to Iceland?! It’s always fun to be recognized as missionaries and to chat with members who are visiting Iceland.
We spent the day on Tuesday visiting waterfalls along the south coast with our kids. All of these waterfalls are so different and they are all so beautiful. The pictures look good but they do not come close to how spectacularly beautiful these places are!
Urriðafoss —
Seljalandsfoss —
Gljúfrabúi —
Írárfoss —
Todd flew the drone at Írárfoss and took these pictures from above:
Check out this beautiful video Todd made with his drone. It’s pretty incredible!
We finished up our outing with some puffins who were happy to let us take their pictures. 🙂
Wednesday was Todd’s 61st birthday. He looks pretty good for 61, don’t you think?! We had a morning meeting with our missionary district. These boys are really terrific and are doing great missionary work. One companionship has been seeing miracles with people simply approaching them and wanting to learn more about the gospel. Last Sunday there was a woman who just came into the church and wanted to know more. She brought a friend with her to institute and they are both curious about what we believe. There is an increased desire for holiness to be prepared to share what we know with all those who want to learn.
The elders sang “Happy Birthday” to Todd in Icelandic and we finished with Costco chocolate muffins for a birthday treat. How’s that for a birthday party?!
Below L-R: Elder Nehren, Elder Nielsen, the Birthday Boy, Elder O’Barr, & Elder Fischbeck
It’s a tradition that on the Denmark Mission messenger chat the missionaries with birthdays get a shout out. Elder Nehren did this great post for Todd’s birthday. I liked it so much I want to share it with you!
In addition to meetings and celebrating, Todd’s birthday also had an erupting volcano! The volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula has been erupting on and off since 2023. Early on the 16th it began its 12th eruption in this cycle. This is a fissure volcano so the earth opens in long cracks and emits hot magma. Basically, Iceland is celebrating Todd’s birthday with the best birthday candles possible! Below is a picture from a live stream we watched throughout the day as we did our work. Todd did not take this picture!
Todd commented on the live stream that it is his birthday and all sorts of people sent him happy birthday wishes. 🙂
We hoped to drive out to see the eruption to close out the birthday celebrations, but it was not a safe place to be. The winds were high and blowing magma shards across the peninsula. My friend Elizabeth lives near the eruption site and she sent me this picture of shards of volcanic glass that were blowing around outside. Just a bit frightening!
Instead of live volcano viewing we finished the birthday celebrations with a steak and a lot of administrative work on our computers. Who doesn’t want to spend their birthday answering emails, doing lesson prep, reviewing phone bills, and sorting church reports? 😉
Thursday started with meetings. We had our early morning mission wide zoom meeting and got to hear from President & Sister Davidson from somewhere on the road in Denmark! We love them and appreciate their guidance.
Elder Monzon began the week with a badly sprained ankle but by Thursday he was back on his feet and at church to meet with Todd and the other elders.
After a morning at the church we went to visit our new friend Mariana. She makes Icelandic wool crafts and her work is beautiful. I bought one of her felted wool sheep at the flea market a while ago and Kathryn wanted her own sheep to take home. Mariana made Kathryn a custom baby sheep and we went to her home to pick it up. She showed us her work space and I love what she does! Look at that life sized sheep she is working on!
Mariana a very talented woman. You can find more of her work here. We gave her a pass along card and invited her to learn more about what we believe. Here is Kathryn’s little sheep with my big sheep! Erika also has one of Mariana’s sheep — a lovely little family of Icelandic sheep spread across the world. 🙂
On Friday morning we took Kathryn & Dana to the airport so they could go home to their family. We were so grateful to have them visit and we love them so much! On our way to the airport we saw this:
It was a spectacular goodbye from Iceland for Kathryn & Dana. Who knew we would have an eruption while they were in town!
We could only view the volcano for a few minutes before getting the kids to the airport so after we dropped them off we spent some more time there before going home. Todd did take these pictures with a good camera and lens. We weren’t as close as this looks!
After such a spectacular morning Friday was full of chores and meetings. Not as enjoyable as having company, but after several weeks of company coming and going there is plenty of work for us to get caught up on. In the picture below I’m having fun going over the Iceland mission phone bill with our friend at Nova. They are super helpful and always happy to answer my questions!
The air quality in Iceland has been horrible this week. Many parts of the country are covered with volcanic smog. The smog is explained in this way: “First, sulfur dioxide is released with the magma. Second, volcanic smog forms when sulfur dioxide reacts with moisture and oxygen, creating fine sulfate particles.” You can read more about it, and see cool graphs, here. Unfortunately, the smog makes Iceland look even more gray, and it gives us headaches. We hope the wind will pick back up soon and blow the smog off the island. As fun as an erupting volcano is, the poor air quality is not fun.
The week ended with a branch wide building cleanup at the church. We joined with many of our branch members and missionaries to do a deep cleaning of the building and have a barbeque. These are good people!
And, just because we needed more food, we had a great dinner meeting with Wes & Karen Mogenhan. We’ve missed our meetings for the last several weeks with our busy schedule and it was great to visit with them and catch up. These two are pretty amazing to work with. And, you have to admit that chicken looks amazing! It was delicious.
Thank you for joining us on another full week of missionary work in Iceland. We are having adventures and we are growing. Most of our mission is amazing, but parts of it are quite challenging and some of that is confidential and can’t be shared here. But you should know that through those challenges we are drawing closer to each other and closer to the Lord. He is guiding us as we solve the problems we are faced with and we can see His hand in our lives.
In his October 2024 General Conference talk Elder Rasband said: “We all need to be lifted up by the Lord with peace, with comfort, and most of all with personal revelation to counter the fear, darkness, and contention encompassing the world.” We have been “lifted up by the Lord with peace, with comfort, and most of all with personal revelation” throughout this past week as we’ve dealt with some difficult challenges. Life is complicated and we thank Heavenly Father every day for the gift of His Holy Spirit. We hope you feel that in your life too as you deal with the challenges you are faced with.
One thing is for sure, a senior mission isn’t boring! Just look at the week we’ve had: family, waterfalls, puffins, a birthday boy!, an erupting volcano, meetings, emails, phone calls, institute, service projects, branch barbeques . . . the list goes on. It is a blessing to serve the Lord in all of these things, to behold His hand in the beautiful world around us and in His beautiful children. We love and praise our Savior Jesus Christ and His true church on the earth today.
Maybe we’ll see you back here next week for more fun?! We hope so! Thanks for your love, support, & prayers.
Don’t forget to check out Todd’s social media pages for more photos and videos. You can find him here:
Leave a Reply