Gleðileg jól!

12/28/24

Merry Christmas! Or, as I’m trying to learn to say in Icelandic, Gleðileg jól! We hope you had a wonderful Christmas celebration this past week. In Iceland, Christmas isn’t officially over until January 6th, so we will continue to celebrate the gift of our Savior Jesus Christ for another week. Hopefully, we will keep this remembrance in our hearts all year.

Our branch put together a lovely program for Christmas Sunday. It included reading the Christmas story from the scriptures along with Christmas hymns. Todd participated in a musical number with some of the other missionaries and it added to the beautiful Spirit of the meeting. While it could have been a Christmas sacrament meeting in any part of the world, the readings in both English and Icelandic made it very unique! The Christmas story is beautiful in both languages!

The singing in our meetings is always in both English and Icelandic at the same time. Todd and I usually both try to sing from the Icelandic hymn book hoping to learn a little bit. But for the Christmas hymns I wanted to be able to really sing the Christmas hymns I love, so I chose English. One very fun song to sing was “Angels We Have Heard On High”. The verses were sung in both languages, people singing and praising in the language they know best. But then, the Gloria chorus was the same for both languages. We would get to that part and then sing in one language – Latin! We are a diverse group of saints, with many different languages, cultures, customs, and histories. But we are united in our love for Jesus Christ and His gospel. Christmas seems to bring everyone together.

One Christmas tradition we love is having a birthday party for Jesus. Each year on Christmas Eve we gather as a family, read or watch the nativity story, & give a gift to Jesus. This gift is something we want to do better in the coming year. It’s a chance to give up a sin or bad habit or to begin to do something we know we’ve been neglecting. We offer this as a gift to Jesus for His birthday. We also review how we did with our gift that was given the year before. It’s a sacred commitment and we love doing this every year. After we give a gift to Jesus, we sing “Happy Birthday” to Him as we march around the room and celebrate! We enjoy treats and play games and have a party. We look forward to this every year.

This year we had our birthday party for Jesus on December 23rd during Institute. We invited the students and the missionaries to join us. We had three students, two friends, and 12 missionaries attend. They participated in our plans with gusto and we had a wonderful party. We gave gifts to Jesus and we marched and sang. And we played a game of Christmas charades — the highlight being when Elder Mijares had to act out “kissing under the mistletoe”. He was so embarrassed that he couldn’t stop laughing and blushing. Fortunately, someone guessed his clue pretty quickly and put him out of his misery!

While it was different to have our birthday party for Jesus without our family, we’re glad we have friends here who would join us to celebrate. Obviously, everything about Christmas is different this year. We are enjoying the newness of things along with the traditions we love and cherish from home.

We woke up on Christmas Eve to an orange alert forecast to begin by evening. An orange alert means winds up to 75 miles per hour with heavy snow. As you can imagine, this creates hazardous driving conditions. When there is an orange alert people, including the missionaries, are advised to stay off the roads. This is the view out of our apartment window.

Different families in our branch had invited missionaries, including us, to join them for the evening. On Christmas Eve celebrations begin at 6:00 pm. Families gather for a meal and then exchange and open presents. It is the highlight of their Christmas celebration. We were all looking forward to experiencing an Icelandic Christmas Eve, however, the orange alert brought the plans to a halt. The elders couldn’t be out on the roads when the blizzard came. Instead of going to branch family’s homes, we hosted four missionaries for an impromptu Christmas Eve waffle night. The Allen’s hosted four missionaries as well. The other four elders were able to attend parties they had been invited to that were near their apartments.

Waffles with Elder Benzley, Elder O’Barr, President Richardson, Elder Nehren & Elder Morales. Farkle (a dice game) with the elders was hilarious. Elder Benzley beat us all!

A rousing game of 5 crowns as well! Yep, sugar, dice, & cards with the elders during a blizzard. Not as great as a traditional Icelandic Christmas Eve, but hopefully a memorable Christmas Eve!

Christmas day was great. We opened some presents together and enjoyed cute cards and letters from our grandkids and children. There may have been a few tears. 🙂 It’s different and hard and good at the same time.

The orange warning continued through the day and kept the weather interesting. We had a mid morning brunch with the elders at Elder & Sister Allen’s apartment. The roads in the city were plowed and we were able to pick up a couple of missionaries and make it over for a party. We had 10 missionaries and 2 senior couple there to celebrate Christmas together. We were just missing our missionaries from Akureyri for a complete group. We had a great time eating and sharing gifts for a couple of hours.

Todd & I worked in secret with the boy’s families to make them a Merry Christmas video. We surprised them with it after brunch and we had a watch party to enjoy their families Christmas wishes. It was super fun!

Lisea Allen is hostess extraordinaire! She’s a terrific cook and sets a beautiful table. She hosted a great party for all of us on a chilly Christmas day.

Before we came to Iceland we had a heads up that the senior couples usually give a small gift to the elders. I spent a day at home making pillowcases for everyone. They are a quick and easy project and so much fun to make. They came to Iceland with me and waited for today to go home to each missionary’s apartment. I will not tell you the details of the discussion about how glad some of them were to have a clean pillowcase . . . not that they can’t wash their current pillowcase! I didn’t want anymore details!

We also gave each apartment a new game of UNO along with this story:

We made our way home safely through the blizzard and spent a lovely afternoon and evening visiting with family. We’re so grateful for technology that allows us to see and talk with our loved ones so often! We had a video appointment with one of our daughters and she surprised us by bringing in all of our girls on the same call! We had a terrific chat with our them, catching up and sharing Christmas wishes. We miss our girls and their families and we love them so much.

We also had a family zoom with my siblings and mom. I don’t think we’ve had one of these since our dad passed away — it’s been too long. It was lovely to be “together” for a little bit.

And, we had a fun call with Todd’s brother and his wife. We’re so grateful for all the good people who are supporting us on our mission!

One other Christmas note — I’ve talked in the past about the Yule Lads who are the “Santa’s” in Iceland. Our social media elders did Yule Lad Facebook posts using pictures of our missionaries dressed up as different Yule Lads. There are 13 and Todd got to be Ketkrókur (Meat-Hook). “He is the twelfth Yule Lad who comes to town on the night before the 23rd of December and departs for home on the 5th of January. Meat-Hook was known for being crazy about meat and he would use a hook to steal a smoked lamb hanging from the rafters.”

Yep, Todd does love some meat! It seems appropriate! Here is what Ketkrókur looks like in the illustrations:

And here is Todd going after a little meat!

Christmas week was less busy than usual for us. We both enjoyed getting some extra sleep and some extra exercise. After Christmas, the blizzard blew itself out and we made it outside for a long walk around the edge of the bay by our apartment. In the picture below, the heart is our apartment. If you follow the ocean bay going left, you’ll head towards the open Atlantic. And to the right, the bay comes to an end. We hadn’t gone around the whole loop before and we enjoyed a snowy walk on the trails. There are even trees along the route and it was magical to walk in the snow and through a small forest. Many other people were out walking too and it was nice to say, “góðan daginn” (good morning) to so many people who were out in the few hours of light and calm weather that we were having.

We finished off our week with a few other enjoyable things:

• We started a new puzzle for the times when we need to relax without being on a screen.
• We went post-Christmas shopping and Todd found his next peysa. We’ve gotten really good at spotting traditional Icelandic sweaters in thrift shops. They are still spendy, but when you get them second hand they are much more affordable. With a little bit of care they look like new! This one is fantastic.

• We spent time preparing for upcoming meetings for the new week.
• We watched some Christmas movies together.
• We napped!
• We both enjoyed having a bit of a break from the regular, more hectic schedule we usually keep.

While things will get busy again (starting tomorrow) we have thoroughly enjoyed our first Christmas in Iceland. Take the joy of Christmas, add in a blizzard, then put it together with some wonderfully fun missionaries and you get a Christmas that is unforgettable!

As it says in 2 Nephi 2:8, “Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth, that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah”. As we serve as missionaries for our Savior Jesus Christ, we share our love for Him and testimonies of Him as we celebrate His birth, His life, His death, and His resurrection for all of His children. Jesus Christ is our Savior! We love Him and we love you. Merry Christmas!

Check out Todd’s social media pages for more pictures and videos from our week. We’ll see you next year! 😉

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

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