8/1/26
In March 2024 Todd and I received our mission call to serve in Iceland until August 2026. At that time August 2026 seemed like it was years away because it was!! I cannot wrap my head around the fact that it is now August 2026 and in two weeks we finish our mission and go home to Oregon. Throughout this past week our mission work has continued right alongside with our visits, early goodbye’s, and lots of reminiscing. The hand of the Lord has been with us in our work and He continues to bless us as we carry on through these last couple of weeks. Even though our time here is coming to a close the work continues and we will keep working! Here’s what we’ve been up to this week:
Sunday:
Last Christmas our daughter Rachel gave us a gift with several dated envelopes for us. We opened the first one on Christmas day and then we opened each envelope on the appropriate date — one about every three weeks. Inside each envelope was a note with things Rachel and her kids were looking forward to doing with us when we get home from our mission, as well as two puzzle pieces. We have loved opening the envelopes, watching the unopened pile get smaller, and reading the cute notes. This Sunday we opened the final envelope! We finally had all of the puzzle pieces and it was fun to see the end result! It was a wonderful Christmas gift that lasted clear through July. 🙂
At church on Sunday we attended both branch’s sacrament meetings and enjoyed them both. In the 1st branch a darling local family was sitting in front of me and I had a fun time watching their children. This picture is just the best! If you look closely you’ll see a super cute little gal along with a book about Jesus and the children. Keep looking and you’ll find a half eaten piece of pizza and some Bluey toys! All good things and it made me smile!
Todd & I both spoke in the 2nd branch sacrament meeting and the Spirit was there. Todd did a bunch of administrative work after that while I taught relief society focusing on President Oak’s talk “Alive In Christ“. Later Sunday evening we had a zoom meeting with Ann & John Eberhard. They are preparing to come to Iceland as senior missionaries in January. They are so excited and we are so excited for them! They will love serving here.
Monday:
Of course I have been baking this week. Yes, there were chocolate crinkles, you already know what they look like! So here are the four loaves of bread I made Monday morning for our Institute dinner before we had to take off for a drive to Selfoss.
The Selfoss branch is getting ready to move to a new building for their meetings. Monday afternoon Todd and I met with the architect and the contractors who will be doing the work to prepare the rooms for the church to use. While we were doing a walk through and discussing the work the contractor told us that he has ancestors who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! He’s doesn’t know much about the church but he is aware of it. We gave all three of these men pass-along cards so they can learn more about what we believe. They will be working on preparing sacred spaces and we hope they feel the importance of that work.
We had a good group of young single adults in institute on Monday evening and we enjoyed the company of a couple of extra guests as well.
Lise & Torbin Jensen are also missionaries for the church. They live in Denmark and their mission call is to work with all of the service missionaries serving, not just in the Denmark Copenhagen mission, but across missions in several different countries. They both still work full time and they travel frequently with their mission responsibilities. We have enjoyed working with them occasionally throughout our mission and we were glad to have this final chance to visit with them and say goodbye.
Sarah Haughawout was also back for one final institute class. Sarah is from the US and she spent a year in Iceland working on her master’s degree. She went home for a couple of months and was back for a few short days before attending Festinord (a church YSA conference) in Finland and then for another year of school in Norway. Sarah is a remarkable woman and we are glad we’ve gotten to know her!
Tuesday:
As we prepare to leave this apartment I want to be sure it is organized and clean. I’ve started working my way through each cupboard to sort and organize and figure out what goes home with us and what stays here for the next couple to use. During Tuesday’s organizing session I threw out several expired over the counter medications. Some that had an expiration date of 2015 on them! And, I pulled out my quilt top. I brought this with me as a project to work on while we were here. It was still in pieces then and during the first year of our mission I finished hand piecing the top. I had planned to hand quilt it during year two but then I picked up knitting needles and the quilt stayed in the closet. It will go home with us and I’ll spend this next winter quilting it. I’ve missed it!
On Tuesday afternoon we drove north to visit with our friends Björg & Ólafur and their son Matti & his wife Shirah. These good people have watched over us, prayed for us, and loved us throughout our entire mission. We love and appreciate them and we enjoyed a good visit to share memories, hopes, and testimonies. This family is an important part of the kingdom of God in Iceland. They love the Lord, serve Him diligently, and have strong testimonies of the truthfulness of the gospel.
Wednesday:
We spent the first half of the day on Wednesday doing lesson prep for our mission wide scripture study class Thursday morning. This is the final scripture study class we will teach. Throughout the past week we had prepared the lesson and Todd had worked hard to finalize it. On Wednesday morning the Holy Ghost whispered that we should be doing something different for the final lesson! So we changed our plans for the day and redid the lesson. It is always worth the effort to change your plans when the Spirit tells you to do so!
Wednesday evening we joined our friends Áslaug & Bragi at their home for dinner and a visit. We love these two! They are an important part of the Selfoss branch and they have taken good care of us while we’ve been here. We will miss Áslaug & Bragi. They fed us a delicious dinner and we enjoyed visiting with them and seeing pictures of some of the beautiful places they have traveled to.
While we were enjoying our evening with these sweet friends we got the news that our newest grandson had been safely born! It was so exciting to share this news with Bragi & Áslaug and rejoice for our daughter and her husband and the newest little member of our family!! We could not be more pleased! 🙂
To finish the night we enjoyed beautiful views on our drive home. Iceland knows how to put on a show! We felt the love of God smiling on us as we thrilled in the blessings we are enjoying and the love we have for our family.
Thursday:
More lovely views started this new day. I was up early and our for a walk near our apartment. I will miss these views.
We had two meetings together on Thursday. First we met in our mission wide scripture study class. This was our final class on this topic and we worked on making a personal study plan and discussed claiming the blessings of reading the Book of Mormon every day. We shared this quote from President Nelson, “My dear brothers and sisters, I promise that as you prayerfully study the Book of Mormon every day, you will make better decisions—every day. I promise that as you ponder what you study, the windows of heaven will open, and you will receive answers to your own questions and direction for your own life. I promise that as you daily immerse yourself in the Book of Mormon, you can be immunized against the evils of the day, even the gripping plague of pornography and other mind-numbing addictions”. I want to make better decisions every day so I will read the Book of Mormon every day. I hope you will too!
We also had a meeting with Tom & Jenny Moore. The Moore’s are coming to Iceland as the new senior missionaries who will replace us when we go home. They are amazing and are going to do such a tremendous job here!! As of today their Icelandic visas are not yet approved. They are supposed to arrive in two weeks but they cannot come until those visas are approved and we are praying for this miracle. Whenever they do arrive they will be a blessing for both the missionaries and the people of Iceland.
Aside from these meetings I spent the day deep cleaning the kitchen so it will be sparkling for the Moore’s! I’m continuing to work my way through the entire apartment in order to get our dirt and mess taken care of before we go home. I enjoyed the work. While I was cleaning Todd was off to other meetings. Mid-day he had companion study with the elders followed by a zoom meeting with the facility manager in England. In the evening he had a training meeting with one of our branch presidencies and a phone meeting with church tech support after that. Todd attended seven different meetings throughout the day Thursday and he was happy to be able to serve in all of them.
Friday:
We went on a field trip on Friday and enjoyed some time outside in the sunshine. But before we could start our hike we participated in our Iceland North District Council meeting over zoom. At least we can be in interesting places for meetings, thanks to the technology!
We brought along the sweaters I knit for us and wore them in the wild! We’ve decided Todd’s is the color of an erupting volcano and mine is the color of the Icelandic moss. Maybe we blend into the scenery?!
We hiked a volcanic crater called Eldborg by Geitahlíð. The top of the crater is about 50 meters above sea level and we enjoyed the climb and the views.
To finish up our field trip we took a drive along the coast to the old Garður lighthouse and enjoyed more ocean views. It was a great way to spend a day outside of meetings and our regular work.
Saturday:
Let’s finish up this post with a quick Saturday recap. We are busy with all sorts of things but here are the fun ones:
We went to the flea market downtown to find our friend Mariana. We’ve loved getting to know her over the past two years and we have bought several pieces of her art. We’ve also invited her to church several times! She hasn’t come yet, but she knows she is welcome to join us. We wanted to bring her some cookies and say goodbye. Thank you, Mariana, for being our friend and sharing your beautiful work with us!
Here is Mariana’s booth at the flea market and you can see more of her work on her Instagram page here. We are taking some of her art home with us to enjoy and help us remember her kindness.
While we were out we had to stop in Costco for a few things and Todd happened to see three of his favorite employees! These guys are so funny and so friendly and they always stop to talk with Todd. While they too have not accepted our invitation to come to church, they know we are missionaries sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and maybe one day that will mean more to them. We had some chocolate crinkles left from this week’s cookie drops so Todd gave the cookies to his friends and they were thrilled! It was a fun goodbye. (Although, there’s a good chance we’ll see them at least once more before we leave!)
Fun fact about Costco — you can use your Costco membership at any Costco in the world. When we started our mission we had our US Costco membership that was good for the first year we were here. Last fall we needed to renew it but we decided to get an Icelandic Costco membership instead. It is quite a bit cheaper than a US one ($48 instead of $65), which is shocking — something is cheaper in Iceland?! This week we renewed our Icelandic Costco membership, at the less expensive rate, and it will be good through most of 2027. Soon in Eugene, Oregon, I’ll be shopping with an Icelandic Costco membership! I wonder if anyone will notice. 🙂
On that exciting note let’s say goodbye for now! We are so grateful for the people we have spent time with this week. It’s wonderful to sit together in our faith and our friendships. We thank you for spending time with us here as well. We hope your August is off to a great start and we’ll see you again in a week.
Check out Todd’s social media pages for more pictures and videos. You can find him here:
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