District Conference

5/10/25

Hello from Iceland! As usual, it’s been a busy week. We’ve had lots to do. I think for this post we’ll go day by day with some highlights.

Sunday: Meetings. Todd had a meeting before church. We had our regular Sunday meetings and took the sacrament during fast and testimony meeting. I had a meeting with Edwnur Ramos, his mom, & the Mogenhan’s. Edwnur is about to start a mission as a service missionary. He will be joining us for many things while he does his service work over the next two years. He’s going to be a great missionary!

Todd had another meeting after church and then he did a temple recommend interview. At home we had an afternoon meal together and then worked on details for the upcoming district conference, emails, & preparation for upcoming meetings this week.

Monday: Work in the apartment and preparation for YSA at the church Monday evening. Todd took an elder to a doctor appointment. I cooked and cleaned. Monday evening we had a fun YSA night with our small group. Dinner was baked potatoes with chili, homemade rolls, and cookies. 🙂

Tuesday: Todd spent the entire morning with Wes Mogenhan & Michael Nelson at the church. Michael is the facilities manager for the church, he oversees building needs for several countries and he was in Iceland for one day. They worked on setting up a video & microphone that can stream meetings from the church over zoom. It didn’t go as smoothly as they hoped, but the new set up will be used during our district conference and future meetings.

While Todd sorted out problems I went for a walk around the bay! 🙂 I also caught up on some of my administrative work and met with our building maintenance team about some problems in our apartment’s bathroom and kitchen. There will be more details about that in future posts — it looks like we get to have a bit of remodeling done!

Here are some pictures from my walk Tuesday morning. The groundcover is perking up and looking beautiful. The lupine is starting to show some buds. And lovely flowers are making an appearance. Since we came to Iceland in the fall we’ve made it through three seasons. We’re excited to see Iceland in the summer!

On Tuesday evening we went downtown for a dinner appointment. On our short walk to the restaurant we saw this stone wall. It especially reminds us of our daughter Erika who, even as a grown woman, loves her fairy houses! I could see her having this wall in her garden one day.

We met our friends Ásta (OW-sta), Wes, & Karen for a traditional Icelandic meal. Ásta takes care of most of the financial and business needs for the church in Iceland. She plays a very important role making sure the bills are paid on time and that we are all well taken care of. She is Icelandic and her family has lived here since the first settlers in Iceland came. We are happy to consider her our dear Viking sister and friend! She’s pretty wonderful!

We (well, everyone but me) sampled the puffin (on the left), and I had a delicious plate of vegetables & beans (on the right).

Several other enjoyed the horse steak. Todd ate every bite except the mushrooms!

It was wonderful to visit together and to share some Icelandic delicacies with our friends.

Wednesday: We had a bright and early start to the day Wednesday at 2:45 when our alarms went off. We picked up Elder Pélissié & Elder O’Barr and headed to the airport. Elder Pélissié had an early flight to Denmark for a couple of days and then, Friday, he goes home to Texas and his mission is finished! He’s done a good job and we’re happy for him to get to return home to his family.

After getting him off to wait for his plane, we went back to their apartment, loaded up Elder O’Barr’s bags, and took him to another missionary apartment. He, and several of the other missionaries, had moves this week for transfers. We found this stack of pizza boxes in their apartment — they’d saved the boxes from each pizza they ate during their companionship. And they were leaving them for the next companionship who moves into their apartment to enjoy!

We got home about 6:30 and had a bit of a rest before Todd was off again to get the winter tires exchanged for summer tires on the final mission car in the zone. It was a busy morning.

We had our final district council meeting for the transfer later Thursday morning. A lot of the boys were moved around and our next district council meeting will have different faces attending.

I’ve mentioned my friend Ásta already. This is what tells you how great she is — almost every day she sends me a conference talk or devotional that she has enjoyed and she thinks I will enjoy it too. We both listen and share our thoughts about the talks and it’s so great. We are growing spiritually and we are growing together as friends. (Here’s the wonderful one she sent me on Wednesday! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_MGAzWIfWo )

Ásta also makes sure to let us know when there are special things happening that we should be aware of. That includes big things like holidays or traditions that we might not know about. And it includes small things like when a bakery is having special and we must sample the delicious products! On Wednesday we visited Brauð & Co for a raspberry snúður — basically an unbelievable raspberry bun. All the profits from their sales of these buns this week go to breast cancer research. Ásta let us know about a delicious treat for a good cause and we were happy to follow through on her suggestion. You know you want one! Yes, it was as good as it looks.

We spent the rest of Thursday morning doing admin work at our kitchen table. This means we’re both on computers, across from each other, sometimes working on the same project and sometimes on different projects. The admin work is never quite finished. And neither is the grocery shopping — we also did some of that Thursday!

Todd taught missionary companion study in the evening. The boys had spent the day moving to new apartments and settling in with new companions. They are excited for the changes and ready to get to work! Todd loves this class each week, I think the boys enjoy it too.

I finished Thursday with our knitting circle. This was the last knitting circle until next fall. My friend, and our relief society president, Björg told me that knitting circles are for the winter months and we spend the summer months outside like we are birds, soaring in the sunlight! Karen and I have been working hard on our knitting with our wonderful teacher, Helga. I think we’ll try to get together with her every now and then through the summer so we can keep improving with our knitting.

Friday: I spent the morning Friday doing food preparation for a lunch I was responsible for on Saturday. It’s our district conference this weekend (like stake conference). We have a visiting General Authority — President Whiting, a member of the Seventy and the President of the Europe North Area, who is here, as well as our mission president, President Davidson. I made a mess in the kitchen, made bread, soup, salad, & cookies all in advance. I enjoyed an audiobook while I worked, Todd kept taking pictures of our spring snowstorm, and we got things done!

Friday afternoon we drove to the airport to pick up the newest missionary in the Iceland Zone. Elder Monzon is terrific and so excited to be here! Elder Nielsen, Elder Nehren, & Elder Morales joined us to make up a welcoming committee at the airport. Iceland gave Elder Monzon a cold, blustery welcome!

The elders took off to head back to the city and Todd and I had a bit of extra time. Guess what we did?! A quick side trip to see the coast line along the edge of the peninsula. Our first stop was at Sandgerði.

And then we went onto Garður. It was fun to explore with the wild Icelandic wind!

Saturday: Now we’ve come to the end of our week. Saturday was busy and great. We were at home for the morning, finishing up the lunch plans and preparing for our conference. We spent the rest of the day at the church for our Saturday district conference responsibilities. We started off with a delicious lunch!

Below are three of the many presidents I spent the day with. 🙂 On the left is President Davidson, the Denmark Copenhagen Mission President. In the middle is President Gummi, the Iceland District President. And on the right is President Whiting, the President of the Europe North Area.

After lunch Todd was in meetings and I spent some quiet time knitting with the Christus statue.

I got to spend a little bit of time visiting with Sister Whiting. She is very kind and has lived in all sorts of interesting places! It was nice to meet her.

After lunch and Todd’s meetings and then dinner, there was a district wide adult session in the evening. There were speakers from different branch councils. Following them President Davidson spoke about the youth of the church in Iceland.

President Whiting was the concluding speaker and I loved his remarks. He spoke about mending our nets. When Jesus called his disciples, some of them were out mending their fishing nets. You can read about it here. He counseled us to look at what we are doing in our lives. If we are not progressing the way we would like to be, review what we’re doing and fix what is not working. Mend the nets! I loved this message.

Elder Fischbeck played the hymns on the organ. He did a great job!

And here are some of our missionaries with two of our new members. Starting at the left: Audrius, Elder Nehren, Elder Nielsen, Elder O’Barr, Elder Geertsen, Elder Moyer, & Vicky.

Check out Todd’s social media pages for more photos and videos. You can find him here:

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

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