3/28/26
Hey, Everybody! Let’s catch you up on what we’ve been up to this week. Yes, it’s been very windy & snowy! The calendar might say spring is here but Iceland has different ideas. At least throughout the week we’ve had lots of these moody views. I think the contrast between the dark sky and the white ground is beautiful!
I’m sure the elders are enjoying the snow as well, don’t you think? They didn’t have to shovel much at all this winter until March. Elder Jensen & Elder Chynoweth took their turn Sunday morning before our meetings at church.
On Sunday we had our Iceland District Conference Sunday session. Members of the district met together for talks and music centered around the theme “Placing the Savior at the Center of our Lives”.
At the beginning of meeting Todd conducted the sustaining of church officers and the district business. We loved being able to sustain President Oaks as our prophet! What a blessing.
In addition to the sustainings, the following changes were made to the organization of the Reykjavik 1st & 2nd branches: Reykjavik 2nd branch was given approval by the First Presidency to change from a Spanish branch to an English branch. The Reykjavik 2nd branch will now be an English designated branch that also hosts Spanish speakers. The Reykjavik 1st branch will remain an Icelandic speaking branch.
This is a big change. Until now, the Reykjavik 1st branch has been an Icelandic branch but with so many non-Icelandic speakers that English has become more prominent. The English can be a problem for the Icelandic speakers and the Icelandic can be a problem for the English speakers, even with available translation. Most of the new members coming into the church at this time are immigrants who do not yet speak Icelandic. The language disconnect has caused some challenges and this adjustment will, hopefully, address some of those issues.
The Reykjavik 2nd branch has been a Spanish speaking branch. A couple of years ago, when this branch was created, there was a large congregation of Spanish speaking members. Unfortunately, because of a change in government policy among other reasons, the Spanish speaking member population has plummeted. Before this change there were just a few Spanish speaking members attending the 2nd branch.
Moving forward the 1st branch will speak Icelandic exclusively with translation to English by the elders as needed and the 2nd branch will be English along with Spanish with translation between both languages throughout the meetings. Branch leadership for both branches has changed, the missionaries will support the branches and their friend’s needs in different ways, and there are lots of trainings and adjustments ahead to get things settled.
This is exciting! There are more than 100 inactive members in the Icelandic 1st branch. We hope that this language adjustment will help some of them desire to return. And, with so many new members in the English/Spanish 2nd branch we hope that hearing more teaching in English will help facilitate their understanding of the doctrines and principles of the kingdom of God.
Todd and I were assigned to work on this restructuring by President Davidson last fall. It has taken quite a bit of time and effort to get things to this point. We will now help with training new leaders and supporting the branches as they adjust to their new language alignment. Families and members can choose which branch their records are in, depending on which language they prefer to hear the meetings in. Todd and I will be attending both branches for the foreseeable future! It will be exciting to see how things come together.
I want to give a shout out to my friend and fellow senior sister missionary, Karen Mogenhan. She led a district choir that sang several songs before and during Sunday’s meeting. The choir sang in English, Icelandic, & Spanish and did a wonderful job. Elder Benzley also worked very hard to learn several songs to accompany the choir.
Later Sunday afternoon Todd and I had Elder Chynoweth (left) & Elder Nielsen (right) over for dinner and a visit. They are currently serving in Akureyri and were in Reykjavik for several days for zone conference and district conference. We planned dinner with them before taking them to the airport. These are excellent missionaries and men and we loved having a bit of time with them. We don’t see the Akureyri missionaries very often and we love them. Because of the weather their flight ended up being delayed almost two hours past the original time. That just meant there was time for games. They taught us a new card game, which was very fun. And then Todd pulled out the extra jumbo cards so we could keep playing games while trying to hold on to these gigantic things! It was fun.
And, just so you don’t forget that I do a lot of baking, here is this week’s institute meal. We ended up having a blizzard with a yellow alert that afternoon so there was plenty of food and everyone was able to enjoy an all you can eat soup & bread dinner. (If you’d like an excellent white chicken chili recipe you can find the one we love here.) The second picture below is looking out our window as the snow was blowing into it sideways!
On Wednesday Todd did a temple recommend interview with Jónína who lives in Akureyri. Jónína is 80 years old and she joined the church four years ago. She is a stalwart member and an important part of the Akureyri branch. She doesn’t speak English and Todd doesn’t speak Icelandic so he had to be creative with google translate, a phone call, and texting to conduct the interview. They had a good interaction and after the meeting was done this sweet woman sent Todd this text. These are some of the many small and sweet moments we get to experience with the members in Iceland.
In advance of a coming storm we took advantage of calm weather on Wednesday afternoon to get outside. We went downtown and strolled the shops along one of the popular tourist streets. We went into the JS Watch company that advertises itself as “Probably the World’s Smallest Watch Manufacturer”.
It is a family business and they make all sorts of beautiful watches. We met Gilbert Guðjónsson who is charming and quite the salesman. If we’d had thousands of dollars to spend on a watch we would have bought one! All sorts of famous people wear his watches. If you’d like to buy one you can find their website here. He looks kind of like Geppetto, don’t you think?!
We strolled through a couple other beautiful shops and found some lovely street art. It was a nice afternoon walk.
On Thursday we had an intense storm over the entire country. On the weather warning scale, yellow is bad, orange is worse, and red is the worst. For the first half of the day Thursday we were orange. The wind was blowing in gusts up to 60 mph. It was snowing sideways because of the wind. Everyone was advised to stay home for the day. We had morning meetings that we did over zoom as the worst of the storm passed through the country. I tried to get some good pictures but everything just looked like a screen of white!
By mid afternoon the worst of the storm had passed and we snuck out for a quick walk before the rain/snow picked up again. The light was gorgeous, the ground was wet and slushy, and the rain/sleet was threatening. But it was nice to get outside.
Throughout the week Todd and I were working on a couple of new projects we’ve been given by President Davidson. We will be doing mission wide classes to review the information covered in the emotional resilience course the missionaries did over the winter. It will be fun to go over some of the important information and skills they learned in those classes. Next winter they will do the full course again, but through the next few months we will do short recaps. We are also getting ready to teach a mission wide class about personal scripture study. These are fun projects to work on together and to serve the young missionaries as we do so.
On Saturday we attended a baptism at the church. It was such a fun and sweet experience to see Míranda get baptized! She is eight years old and she lives with her family in Blöndós, which is about a three hour drive north of Reykjavik. They are in the Akureyri branch and Míranda chose to be baptized in the church building in Reykjavik in the same baptismal font her dad and her brothers were all baptized in. She was baptized by her dad, Eyþór.
Míranda’s parents gave me permission to share this picture of their family. They are so cute! Below you see Maliana, Míranda, Kai, Felix, & Eyþór.
Eyþór is a professional organist. He is an incredibly gifted performer and we have heard him play in a professional capacity before. (If you’d like to hear what he can do, click here for a great playlist.) Míranda wanted her dad to play the organ at her baptism. I loved getting this picture — dad in his white clothing, preparing to baptize his daughter. And his family is in the front row sitting together at this special event.
It was nice to gather with the other senior couples at the baptism. Cheryl and Karen are wonderful ladies. They are terrific missionaries and a great support (along with their husbands) in the work in Iceland. They are also sweet friends.
Curt and Cheryl Hutchings live in Akureyri and support the mission work and the branch. They flew to Reykjavik Saturday morning, just for the day, to attend Míranda’s baptism and support her family. They were supposed to fly back home Saturday evening but the weather did not cooperate. We had several weather alerts throughout the week and Saturday afternoon a yellow alert came into town, beginning just as the baptism was finished up.
While it’s not as severe as an orange alert, yellow alerts must be taken seriously. Eyþór and his family, and other families who live to the north, left for their long drives home ahead of the storm. We heard from them later that the weather improved as they went north and everyone made it home safely. As the storm headed north the conditions deteriorated and all the flights were cancelled. The Hutchings ended up with an unexpected overnight stay in the city. We hope they will be able to fly home early Sunday morning but we will see what the weather has to say about that.
Because everyone needed to leave the baptism and start driving home before the storm, Todd and I stayed at the church to clean up following the meeting and visiting. We didn’t have far to go to get home and we were happy with the opportunity to help. Just as we finished up and got into our car another car pulled into the church parking lot and a couple got out, into the wind and snow, and headed to the church. We were glad we were still there so we could let them inside and see how we could help.
Julia & Simon Olsson are from Stockholm, Sweden and are in Iceland for just a couple of days for a work trip. Julia’s parents, Leif & Eva Mattsson, were the mission leaders in the Denmark Copenhagen mission just before our current leaders, the Davidsons. The Mattsson’s finished their mission just a couple of months before we began ours so we never got to meet them, but we’ve heard a lot about them! We had a very nice visit with Julia & Simon. We showed them around the church and we talked about the work in the district and mission and our families. They are good people doing good things! They just ended up coming to Iceland during the worst weather of the winter! 🙂 We hope they felt the warmth of the Spirit while we visited together. It was really fun to meet them.
This day, this week, and this post end as the week began . . . wind, snow, and weather alerts! Here are more pictures of snow blowing sideways. If you step out into it the wind will knock you over and you’ll be soaked so we’re all glad to stay in doors! I suppose one day the winter will end and spring will be here. But I don’t think it will happen in March.
We are thankful for a warm, safe place to live that shelters us from the storms outside. And we are thankful for our testimonies of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are looking forward to the Easter week ahead and General Conference next weekend when we will receive more guidance and counsel — spiritual alerts — that will keep our testimonies safe in the storms that surround us in the world. Thank you for your love, prayers, and support for us and for our family. We are blessed to have you in our lives. Watch out for those alerts! They will keep you safe. See you next week.
Check out Todd’s social media pages for more photos and videos. You can find him here:
Leave a Reply