A Few Fun Things 🙂

2/22/25

We started out our week with a very busy Sunday. We attended three sacrament meetings, I had an evening zoom meeting followed by a video chat meeting, & Todd had two evening zoom meetings! Our first sacrament meeting was in the Reykjavik 2nd branch which is a Spanish branch. Their numbers are few but their love and faith in Christ is strong! These people welcome us in with open arms when we come to visit. In the 2nd branch this Sunday we spent some time talking with Armando. He joined the church about a year and a half ago and his testimony is bright. Armando is leaving Iceland next week to go back to Venezuela for a few months and then he is off on an internship. He’s looking forward to serving a mission following his internship and we know he will do amazing things in his service for the Lord. Armando told me he reads this blog every week to see what we’ve been up to and to improve his English (which is already very good). So, if you’re reading this right now, hello Armando! And hello to our friends in the Spanish branch. 🙂 We love you!

My evening zoom meeting was with my friend Bettina, who is in Selfoss, and our friend Anna Maria who is in Finland. Anna Maria is the area organization advisor for the women’s leadership in the church in Scandinavia. It’s a pleasure to work with these good women. Finland is two hours later than Iceland right now and Anna Maria was up until 11:00 pm with us in this meeting! It was 9:00 here and I needed to go to bed. She has some stamina!

Would you believe that on Monday we were back at the disco, I mean the phone store, with two more missionaries to start working things for on their driver’s license applications?! We are in driver’s license mode right now and it will probably continue for some time. I’ll try not to bore you with the details, but Todd insists on getting photos of each companionship with the beautiful Icelandic employees at Nova! Here are Elder Benzley & Elder Mijares and today’s lovely helper.

And, not quite super models, but we are happy to have made it through the first stage in the license process with these two.

Here he is, trying it out!

Between our work hours we like to get outside a little bit, as you probably know! One afternoon we went downtown and found a few new things to see. We started at a statue of Einar Benediktsson who was an Icelandic entrepreneur and poet.

This statue is located next to the Höfði House. This beautiful building has quite the history. Built in 1909, it has been used for official and political business throughout its history. Some of the notable people who have been here are Sir Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, and more. You can read more about it here. And, Einar Benediktsson – whose statue is on the grounds, lived in this house from 1914-1917.

We brought them home for a waffle feast after working on SIM cards and electronic IDs (which were giving us some challenges). Below are Elder Young, Elder Moyer, Elder Nielsen, Elder Fischbeck, and President Richardson.

Yep, one more set of Nova pictures for this week. We were back again with Elder Nehren for some more business and a quick visit with Elder Nehren and Elder Morales, which was fun.

Aside from the business side of our mission there were a few fun things we enjoyed this week and I am excited to share them with you!

1. We parked next to this van on one of our stops and it made me laugh! Todd wanted to sign it but he doesn’t qualify — he’s not grumpy or old. 🙂

2. I found this itty bitty pineapple at Kronan and just loved it! It is literally the size of my hand and is so adorable. It only had a little bit of edible fruit inside once I cut into it, but it was worth buying just because it was so cute! I’ve never seen such a small pineapple. You can tell from it’s top that it took a long time to get to the grocery store in Iceland. It was on the produce clearance shelf and cost 99 krona, or a whopping 71 cents US. Worth every penny. 🙂

3. Another thing that made me smile are these pass along cards. The mission often sends bundles of pass along cards to the missionaries to use in their work. This time they also made individual cards for the senior couples. If you scan the QR code it gives you our contact information as well as a link to the Church’s website. It’s fun! I’m looking forward to sharing them in the community as we do our work. This picture shows both sides of our card:

4. Todd got more mail this week. He is taking driving school online to help the elders prepare for their written driving tests, and he recently finished both driving school 1 and driving school 2. We received his “Student Driver” magnet in the mail that can be stuck onto the back of our car when he is driving! Ha! I’m pretty confident it will not actually be on our car, but it is an accomplishment we are excited about! Maybe some of the young elders will want to borrow it?!

5. We had this fun video chat with two of our daughters and our grandchildren. The cousins were playing together and one daughter took a photo of some of the kids talking to us on our other daughter’s phone. They are so cute! We miss them so much.

6. And, we went for a walk and saw these lovely Eider ducks. I think they are really beautiful. And, the view over our apartment complex just makes me happy. It’s colorful and the ocean is just beyond the buildings, right where these ducks were swimming. We live in a gorgeous place.

Let me tell you a story about our friend Audrius. He is a newer member of the church who attends our branch and I’ve talked about him in this blog before. He is so firm in his faith in Christ and his testimony is solid. We can all learn something from Audrius! The other night we were at the church and Todd was working with some of the elders. Audrius came in for an Icelandic language class that the elders are teaching. He was a bit early and we sat and talked for a little bit about how his life is going. Audrius has some serious challenges but he is facing them with his faith in Jesus Christ. As we were talking he told me that he cannot believe so many people go through their lives without knowing about the goodness of the gospel. He testified that he sees miracles in his life every day and other people can’t see them. They are blind to the miracles and the goodness of God around them. He was really sad for them! He knows his life is better because he has made covenants with God and he can see the blessings that come from keeping those covenants. I love hearing him testify and his testimony fills me with gratitude for my knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We ended the week at the Þorrablót festival the Selfoss branch had. We were thrilled to be invited to join them for this mid-winter feast. You can read all about the festival at this link: “During the Þorrablót festival, Icelanders host parties and toast to the old gods over a spread of weird and wonderful food – known as þorramatur (literally, ‘Þorri’s food’).”

The feast celebrates foods that were typically eaten in late winter in the times before we could run to the store for a pineapple or some fresh meat, no matter what time of year it was. We had no idea what to expect from the festival and we were not disappointed! Check out this spread:

Lamb’s head:

Blood sausage & Liver sausage:

Your choice of bite sized delicacies:

Todd was so brave and tried everything. I wanted to be brave but I didn’t try everything. 🙂

Eyeball, anyone?

And, Elder Allen went all in with fermented shark!

We loved spending the evening with the Selfoss branch. They made us feel loved and welcomed. Everyone wore their lopapeysa, and we enjoyed the traditional Icelandic foods & Icelandic folk songs. It was a special evening with these good people!

President Richardson with Elder Benzley & Elder Mijares –

And, with that amazing celebration we are at the end of another wonderful week in Iceland. Thank you for joining us in these fun things! If you want to be sure you don’t miss any of our weekly posts, click the subscribe button on our website homepage and then the blog will be emailed to you each week. I mean, you don’t want to miss any fermented shark, do you?! See you next week!

Check out Todd’s social media pages for more pictures and videos from our week. You can find them here:

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61561154456959

https://www.youtube.com/@todde.richardson/videos