5/17/25
The beautiful month of May is in full swing! The weather this week has been gorgeous and our schedule has been a little less hectic. That combination makes for enjoying missionary work in the nearly endless sunshine that comes with living on the top of the planet. Today, May 17th, the sun rose at 4:08 am and set at 10:40 pm giving us 18 1/2 hours of sunlight, not counting the twilight hours! It’s amazing! We’ve had very warm weather, so many Icelanders are walking around in shorts! After the long cold winter, 65 degrees F is pretty hot! Here’s what we’ve been up to this week:
On Sunday we had our second day of the Iceland District Conference. We enjoyed visiting with President & Sister Whiting and learning from them. At one point, before the meetings began, I was talking with Sister Whiting about the sacrifice that we’ve both made to leave our children and grandchildren to serve the Lord. Todd and I have been away from our family for about eight months. President & Sister Whiting have been serving away from family for about eight years! She told me that when she is missing her family she remembers a scripture that has given her comfort over the years. Omni 1:26 says we should “offer [our] whole souls as an offering unto him”. She remembers that she is offering her family to our Savior while she is away from them to serve the Lord. This helps her feel better about being apart. Instead of family being taken from her, she is offering them. It was sweet and tender counsel she shared with me — on Mother’s Day — to help comfort me as I miss our children and their families. I appreciate her for ministering to me personally in this way.
Below is President Gummi, Todd, President Davidson, and President & Sister Whiting, before the meeting begins.
During the meeting Gummi taught about his vision for a temple in Iceland one day and the joy of living the gospel in Iceland. Todd taught about the law of the gospel, you can read more about it here, and how it is in and through everything we do in our lives. President Davidson spoke about missionary work and the efforts needed from both members and missionaries to strengthen the rising generation in the church. Sister Whiting spoke about the scriptures and the power of the Book of Mormon. President Whiting spoke about facing our tents towards the temple (learn more about that here) and how adjustments to church policies are meant to help us draw closer to Christ.
The missionaries sang the song “Gethsemane” and they did a beautiful job.
Over 100 people attended the conference and felt of the Spirit that was there. One very interesting thing about this conference was the language and translation effort. The meetings were conducted in Icelandic and we had speakers in Icelandic, English, & Spanish. Almost everyone in the meeting wore a headset for translation, unless someone spoke all three languages. (There are a few members who do.) Throughout the meeting there was ongoing translation of Icelandic to English & Spanish, English to Icelandic & Spanish, and Spanish to Icelandic & English! It was impressive.
It was also very fun to be with friends. President Davidson & the Whitings had to leave for the airport right after the meeting concluded, but Todd had district business to attend to so I got to visit with friends! Lise & Torbin Jensen live in Denmark and oversee the service missionaries in several Scandinavian countries. They were in town to work with our new service missionary, Edwnur. We’ve been working together on efforts for Edwnur and they are delightful. We’re getting to be good friends!
And, here are a few of the lovely women in our district. They have adopted me as a fellow Icelandic sister and I love them for it! Below you’ll see me, Bettina, Greta, & Valla — Remarkable, strong, good women. It’s a group I’m thrilled to be part of!
Later in the afternoon we had our fellow senior couples, Wes & Karen Mogenhan and Tammy & Steve Tolley, over for a waffle party. It was Mother’s Day and I was craving waffles for my treat. (We pretended it was a nutritious dinner!) While we were all in town for the conference, it was fun to get together, eat delicious waffles, and celebrate our missions and Mother’s Day. The Tolley’s go home in June and this will be one of our last visits with them. After the conference they flew back up to Akureyri where they are serving.
We finished a lovely Mother’s Day with some video chats & texts with some of our daughter’s and my mom. It was the perfect way to end a very busy, and occasionally stressful, district conference weekend.
As usual, we had time for a few nice walks this week. On Tuesday we walked up through Elliðaárdalur, a beautiful park within walking distance of our apartment. With the gorgeous weather, we were happy to be out enjoying the sunshine.
On Wednesday we had several ministering visits planned throughout the afternoon. I made a few baby loaves of bread to take along with us to share.
We drove to Sólheimar, a beautiful, sustainable community about an hour’s drive from Reykjavik. Our friends Bragi & Áslaug work there and we stopped by surprise them with a hug and some bread. It’s a lovely place and we enjoyed seeing them and doing some exploring on the grounds. We’ve been here before in the winter, but in the summer it looks very different!
They encouraged us to visit the organic greenhouse where they have vertical gardens and you-pick tomatoes. We were befriended by Kya, who works there, and she gave us a tour. It’s an impressive sight! I was happy to come away with some delicious tomatoes I enjoyed with my dinner.
Sólheimar is home to many people with special needs and different abilities. They make crafts that they sell in their store and I found this lovely pot holder and these cards, both made by residents, that I was happy to purchase for our apartment. It was such a great place to visit!
On our way to our next stop we made a quick detour at the church in Borg. We love exploring these churches.
We had started our afternoon visiting Bragi & Áslaug. Then we went on to see Agnes & Cedric, Elizabeth & Sævar, Rosa, Valla, Greta, and Jóhann & Þórstína. These are all members in the Selfoss branch and they are really terrific people! In Iceland it is unusual to just show up at someone’s home for a visit. Typically, you make an appointment and then you go visit. But we like to surprise people and just show up! Everyone we stopped to see was at home. We shared our bread and our love and our Savior’s love with them, and it was such a fun way to spend the day. They lifted and ministered to us and welcomed us into their homes. It was so nice!
Something I didn’t mention from the start of the week was the work being done on our shower floor. For months the grout between the tiles on our shower floor has been coming up. The tiles have lifted and there was water underneath causing all sorts of problems. Last week the apartment maintenance team came by to have a look and let us know that they needed to take out all the tile, dry out the floor, and lay new tile. Monday morning our doorbell rang and, surprise! They were ready to get started! So throughout the week we haven’t had a shower we could use.
One night the Mogenhan’s welcomed us to come shower at their apartment. (Thank you, Wes & Karen!) And Wednesday night, after we’d spent the day doing our visits, we got a hotel on the south coast. We had a fun date night and a nice shower Thursday morning. It was a fun overnight trip and a good thing to do while they finished up the work in our bathroom.
The town we stayed in is called Eyrarbakki and the hotel is part hostel, part hotel rooms. The town was once an important fishing hub on the south coast and the building we stayed in used to be something else (I can’t find out what!) but they’re remodeled it into hotel rooms. It was fun and interesting! And, most importantly, had a clean, working shower. 🙂
We participated in our weekly mission wide zoom meeting on Thursday morning from the hotel.
On our way home we drove through another town on the south coast, Þorlákshöfn. Of course we stopped at the church. Look at the beautiful carvings on the doors!
We took a walk to the lighthouse, down the coast from the church.
There are two beautiful metal works at the beach here. Below is Koma Auðar djúpúðgu (Audur’s arrivals) — commemorating Auðar, a woman who sailed to Iceland and who is remembered in one of the saga’s.
And this one is a tribute to men who were lost at sea in a fishing boat accident.
Here I am standing by the Audur’s arrivals so you can see how big they are.
We had a great overnight trip and got home mid-day Thursday to completed tile work on the shower floor! It looks and smells better and will now, hopefully, be watertight for years to come. You can see the progress below from start to finish throughout the week.
Our tile guy, Runer, and his son, Runer, did a good job! We left them an Icelandic Book of Mormon, our pass-along card, and some snickerdoodles along with a thank you note for their hard work. We’re grateful for skilled craftsmen and functional showers!
We had a Friday morning waffle meeting with our zone leaders, Elder Nehren & Elder Nielsen. Todd had a bunch to discuss with them and it turned into a delicious brunch meeting. Yes, I did get waffles twice in the same week! It was a delicious spring time miracle!
We had a Friday dinner appointment with our friend, Elizabeth. She isn’t attending church right now, but she and her husband often invite us for dinner and a visit with their family. They live in Keflavik, about an hour away from us. Whenever we go there we like to take some extra time to do a little exploring. We went to the Garðskagi Folk Museum which contains all sorts of collections and artifacts from life in Garður.
The museum is just across from the old lighthouse. We’ve visited this lighthouse last week in some major wind! On this day we enjoyed it in the sunshine.
We made another stop at Útskálakirkja to enjoy the church and the cemetery. I often check the Find A Grave website when we are at different cemeteries to see if they have been cataloged. We were surprised to find that this cemetery has not been documented on the website. We added one entry and took a photo for another entry. There are many graves there and we may try to find time to do some work to document the cemetery.
We enjoyed our dinner and visit with Elizabeth and her family. Her husband, Oskar, made us traditional Icelandic lamb, potatoes, gravy, beets, & cabbage for dinner. It was great! And their baby, Alex, is pretty cute too!
On our way out of town we visited a couple of other members who live in Keflavik. One is a family from Venezuela who are waiting to find out if they get residency in Iceland or not, and the other is a new member who is from Africa. He is working and trying to raise money to bring his family here to join him. Neither of these families have cars and they cannot come to the city for church on Sundays. We brought them some cookies, visited and encouraged them. And we offer our prayers on their behalf in hopes that things will soon get better for each of them.
Before going home we drove by the most recent lava field. It’s always impressive to see what the earth is doing! There isn’t an active eruption right now, but each time there is Iceland grows a little bit larger!
We finished the week off with odds & ends and sunshine. We joined several of the missionaries to clean the church and prepare it for Sunday’s meetings.
We visited Elder Nielsen to check on him after a night being sick. I had to snap a photo of him with his blanket, water bottle, ginger ale, and barf bucket. 🙁 Hopefully it’s just a 24 hour bug.
We had a fun dinner with Wes & Karen to review the week and plan for what’s ahead. And we got a view of one of the first cruise ships to come to town with summer tourists.
Several people have warned us that the beautiful weather will not last. The forecast says rain will return next week. But until then we will enjoy the sunshine! As President Nelson taught: “The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.” We love the sunshine and we love the rain. We love the wind and we love the calm. We love our Savior and we know He loves us. Thank you for joining us this week! See you again soon.
Check out Todd’s social media pages for more pictures and videos. You can find him here:
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