3/1/25
Hello Friends! Welcome to another episode of: What will happen in Iceland this week?! Come with us and see!
As usual, we started out with a busy Sunday. We drove to Selfoss Sunday morning to spend the day with the Selfoss branch. There were 17 branch members, 1 friend, and 4 missionaries in the meeting. Todd & I were the speakers in their sacrament meeting with our friend Greta translating into Icelandic for us. I spoke about repentance and preparing our hearts to receive the Savior. Todd spoke about having faith in Jesus Christ and taught from a wonderful talk by President Oaks from 2010. You can read it here.
After church Todd did temple recommend interviews and I did a primary training with my friends Bettina & Perlynda. Perlynda is the branch primary president – and the entire primary staff – in Selfoss. There are two active primary children, a 10 year old and a 3 year old. It’s a unique situation and Perlynda does every part of primary every week. She is amazing.
When we were done at church, Perlynda & her husband Bárður had Bettina, Todd, & I over for a wonderful meal and a visit. They hosted us in their gorgeous home, fed us delicious food, and shared their love and testimonies with us. Bárður is employed by the church as a translator and he is always working to translate church materials from English into Icelandic. We had a great discussion about the newly released hymns and the process involved in translating music into a different language. It was very interesting! (If you’d like to see a video about the hymns translation process, click here. Bárður worked independently on the Icelandic translations.) We loved spending time with these stalwart saints. Below: Pamela, Perlynda, & Bettina.
Another fun dinner this week happened on Tuesday night with Tracy & Lisea Allen and our friend in the branch, Ásta. Ásta does the behind the scenes work for the mission here in Iceland. She deals with the banks and financing issues, landlords, and all sorts of other details I don’t even know about! And she is an endless source of knowledge. If I have any question, Ásta probably knows the answer. She has been a member of the church since it was just beginning in Iceland. It is wonderful to visit with her and learn about how the church was in those days — about 50 years ago! We ate in a lovely restaurant downtown while the snow was falling outside. It was very picturesque.
Now, let’s get down to the beautiful food we ate! We started with lobster tacos and beef carpaccio as appetizers.
The bread was served along with salted butter on a lava stone. That’s not something you see every day.
For our main course, Todd had the catch of the day which on Tuesday was perch, and I had the seafood pasta.
Ásta had lamb and it was the most beautiful plate of food on the table. She was nice enough to let us get a photo for the blog. Thanks, Ásta!
Apparently, a big part of a senior mission is eating and being with good people. Who doesn’t want to do that?! We had a nice evening together.
Mid week we had a visit with our friend Margrét. She is a member of our branch and this was our first opportunity to meet in person. When we arrived she surprised us with Icelandic pancakes & hot chocolate! 🙂 Margrét was born and raised in Iceland. She lived in the US for over 20 years with her work and her family. Eventually she came back to Iceland. She has had cancer four times and is currently being treated for bone cancer. It is amazing she is alive! It was such a pleasure to meet her and hear about her life. Soon she is moving to Ísafjörður, a town in the Westfjords, to live near her son. Ísafjörður is more than 250 miles from Reykjavik and we won’t get to see her often. But we will continue our friendship and help encourage each other to live the gospel.
On Thursday we left on a road trip to Akureyri. We picked up Elder Pelissie & Elder O’Barr at about 9 am and started on the 250 mile drive. The elders were going to do splits with the Akureyri elders for a few days and we were their ride. In good weather it is about a 5 hour drive. We had some snow and wind, but the roads weren’t too bad and we were happy to be driving with light to help us through the snow.
We were glad that only part of the drive was like this:
Thanks to technology we were able to participate in our Thursday morning mission wide zoom meeting. President & Sister Davidson joined us on our drive for a few minutes!
Most of the drive is beautiful and the clouds were gorgeous!
We weren’t sure if this bike rider was crazy or amazing!
You may remember a few weeks ago when we attended an organ concert given by a member of the Akureyri branch. His name Eyþór and he and his family live in a small town in northwest Iceland called Blönduós. The road to Akureyri goes right through this lovely town and we decided to drop off some cookies for their family. No one was home in the middle of the day, but we left them cookies and sent them a selfie so they would know who left chocolate at their house! This is the view from their driveway – it’s breathtaking! (Or maybe that was the wind?!)
At the end of the day Elder & Sister Tolley hosted us along with Elder Geertsen, Elder Peliesse, Elder O’Barr, & Elder Moyer. We had a nice dinner and a fun visit. The Tolley’s are serving as senior missionaries in Akureyri and are wonderful ministers and good people. It was nice to work with them for a couple of days.
Before settling in for the night we stopped at Akureyrarkirkja, a Lutheran church right in the center of Akureyri. It’s an impressive sight! We could just glimpse the aurora out above the church and we took a chilly stroll up the stairs and enjoyed the view.
We had a great adventure on Friday in Akureyri! We started our day with a few cookie drop off’s to branch members here. It’s a very American thing to just show up at someone’s home without an appointment! And, we are American’s living in Iceland, so they aren’t kind when we show up uninvited. Maybe the cookies help? We visited Jónína, Elspa, & Karítas in their homes for short visits. All three of these women have lived in Akureyri their entire lives. They each joined the church at different times and they all contribute to the strength of the branch in Akureyri. It was fun to visit with them and we love the welcome we get from the saints here.
After cookies and visits we took the afternoon to do some exploring. We left Akureyri intending to go to Húsavík, a town about an hours drive northeast of Akureyri. But, we got sidetracked by the absolute beauty of Eyjafjörður. Akureyri is located along the western edge of the spectacular beauty of Eyjafjörður. I am not exaggerating about this place! To go to Húsavík, we drove across a bridge to the east side of the fjord. After driving north for just a bit, we needed to turn east across the mountains to get there. But, the road north continued along the edge of the fjord and we thought we would stay on that road for a bit to see where is went before going back to the east and to Húsavík. We never made it east to Húsavík! That will be a trip for another day!
After a short drive we came to Laufás Museum and heritage site. A priest has been living at this site since 1047! There is a large turf house where the priest’s family would live. And there has been a church built on this site for nearly 1000 years. You can read more about it here. The site is closed for the winter, but the grounds are open for wandering. While we couldn’t go inside the house or the church we enjoyed imagining what it would be like to live there!
We drove further north until we came to the end of the road at a town called Grenivík. Grenivik has about 400 residents and a lovely, small town. There are a few other roads north of this town, but they are F roads, which means gravel roads that are not maintained. We aren’t looking to get stuck and abandoned anywhere! So we stopped our travel northward at this charming little town. There was a small jetty out into the ocean by where we parked and it was absolutely idyllic. The sky was blue, the ocean was bluer! The wind was blowing. The mountains across the fjord were brilliant. There obviously aren’t enough words for me to tell you how much we loved this place! It’s very remote, and truly special.
After turning south again we thought we still had time that afternoon to drive to Húsavík. A road sign directed us east but after just a short drive the pavement ended and we were on a gravel road. There wasn’t snow on the road, but we knew it wasn’t smart to drive 24 km on an F road in the winter. But, Todd did drive us down the road just a bit so we could see what we could see. And, holy cow, it was worth it. We parked near a bridge that crossed the Fnjóská river. The bridge was marked closed and there was some ice and snow so we left the car a did a little bit of exploring. Yes, this is a snow/ice bridge. I wonder how long it will take all of this ice to melt?! And, yikes! How much it had to snow this winter to build up this type of mini glacier! Incredible.
And, a little further upstream:
The day was not over yet. By this time we had completely given up on Húsavík and we stuck to paved roads to get back to Akureyri. But, a lighthouse caught our attention and we needed to see it. We pulled into Svalbarðseyri, another small town (about 250 inhabitants) along the fjord. Todd made it to the top of the lighthouse and we savored more amazing views of Eyjafjörður.
We finished off this really terrific day by joining in a game night with some members of the Akureyri branch. We ate good food, visited with good people, and played games together. It was a nice ending to a really lovely day.
But then there was this!
We planned to stay in Akureyri through church on Sunday and drive back to Reykjavik Sunday afternoon. Saturday morning the top part of the country was in a yellow warning — meaning lots of rain, snow, and wind. The warning was set to expire at 2 pm Saturday and a new yellow warning was forecast for early Sunday morning. The new warning was for severe weather along the road south we would drive and all the way into Reykjavik. The warnings extend several days into next week and we decided it would be safest to load up the elders and head home between the storms. We were sorry to cut a day off of the elders visits for splits, but safety comes first. They had a good visit and did a lot of work in the short time we had together. Below is Elder O’Barr, Elder Geertsen, Elder Peliesse, & Elder Morel.
Todd and I had a bit of trouble with the wind just trying to leave our hotel!
The drive home was windy and very rainy, but we made it safely. It was a wonderful, quick trip to visit the saints in Akureyri. We were so glad we could go. In General Conference in 2022, President Eyring taught, “When the storms in life come, you can be steady because you are standing on the rock of your faith in Jesus Christ.” In the wind and the rain, the snow and the sleet, we are steady in our faith in Jesus Christ. The weather may be trying to kill us, Satan may be doing his best to tempt us, life may be discouraging and upsetting, but through our Savior Jesus Christ we will be strong, true to the faith, and solid in our testimonies of Him. Isn’t it amazing! See you next week!
Check out Todd’s social media for lots of pictures and more videos. You can find him here: