5/31/25
Hello Friends! I’d like to start out by reassuring all of you that I am just fine. I appreciate the love, concern, and support you sent me after last week’s post when I shared my my horrible, no good, very bad day. 🙂 I love you for caring and praying for us. When Todd and I decided we wanted to do a public blog to share our mission experiences we wanted to be sure we were representing all the aspects of what this service looks like. We didn’t want to only share the good things and pretend that there is nothing hard, uncomfortable, or stressful. Truthfully, most of a mission is hard, uncomfortable, and stressful. It would have been much easier for us, and our family, if we had stayed in Oregon serving in our ward and being with our family. But we were called by the Spirit and by prophets of God to serve a mission and we are willing to do it, even with the very bad days.
In October 2023 Elder Rasband gave a talk called “How Great Will Be Your Joy” about encouraging senior couples to serve missionaries. You can read it here. At the time we heard this talk we were getting ready to start our mission papers. He talks about the joy that comes to senior couples who sacrifice to serve the Lord in the mission field. None of the prophets have ever said missions are easy, no matter your age. We are being stretched, learning to have greater faith in Jesus Christ, and watching our family as they too are stretched and exercising faith in Jesus Christ. The hard days are worth it. But, truthfully, most of the days are good, beautiful days to be a missionary!
Now, here are a few of the variety of things we did while serving the Lord in Iceland this past week!
Sunday was busy, busy, as they usually are. We attend the Selfoss branch every fourth Sunday and we are always happy to spend time with these good saints. There were several tourists in the meetings and Todd made friends with the Jaquier family from the south of France who are traveling in Iceland for the week. They invited us to visit them at their home near Marseille some day. We may have to do that! They are lovely people.
And, I always need a photo with Bettina & Valla. These happy, valiant women are a pleasure to work with.
After church we went for a visit to Jóhann & Þórstína’s home. They fed us delicious rice pudding with cinnamon & sugar, smoked lamb & bread and fruit. After lunch Þórstína and I worked on her family history. Next week they are going to the temple in Denmark and both Jóhann & Þórstína want to be sealed to their parents. (If you would like to learn about what it means to be sealed, click here.) We spent time finding the correct names and information and after an hour or so we were able to print off the paperwork necessary for nine ordinances to be completed. While they are in Denmark they will get to do this work and Þórstína was so happy to have the names ready to take with them. It was fun to help her!
Because we were in Selfoss for the day we weren’t able to attend two baptisms in the first branch on Sunday. We are so happy for Faith and Zion who both made covenants with God as they joined the Church. These are good people. In the pictures below — Left: Elder Fischbeck, Faith, Christopher (who baptized Faith) & Elder Young. Right: Elder Nielsen, Zion, Christopher (who baptized Zion) & Elder Nehren. Christopher is a newer member of the Church and he is an incredible missionary!
We finished our day on Sunday watching our nephew’s mission farewell over zoom. Luke Heiner is leaving soon to serve a mission for the Church in Côte d’Ivoire in Africa. We are so glad we could participate and enjoy his inspired words. Luke is going to the missionary training center in Ghana. We have several members in our branch in Iceland who are from Ghana! The world is small. 🙂 He will be a terrific missionary.
I hope you don’t get tired of our Monday schedule — it doesn’t often change. With Institute and YSA every Monday night I usually spend Monday’s cleaning the apartment and cooking and baking for our group dinner. The group is slowly growing and it is looking like I need to start making larger meals! What a great problem! This week was white chicken chili – an absolute favorite – along with homemade bread, salad, & cookies. They ate every bite.
Audrius is one of our newer members and he comes to YSA night every week. He always teases me that the food isn’t spicy enough. I can’t make it so spicy that others can’t enjoy it so this week Todd brought a canister of Siracha seasoning that people could add to their chili for extra spice if they wanted. Audrius dumped several tablespoons into his soup and told us it was just right. He did this for two bowls! He was turning red and sweating, but he insisted it wasn’t too spicy! He wouldn’t open his eyes for a picture, but he let me take one of his bowl of spicy red soup and smiling red face. It was pretty funny!
On an early morning walk I saw a cruise ship doing a 360 degree turn in the bay. And, I brought home a bouquet of wild lupin and marsh saxifrage. There are millions of lupin in bloom right now. It is invasive and the locals consider it a weed. But what a gorgeous weed! The country is covered in a carpet of wildflowers and I love all of it.
Todd has been enjoying the electric scooters that are available to rent. Let me give you some background about this. Todd has lived on or near a motorcycle since he was born. All of our years in Oregon he didn’t have a car, he had a motorcycle for his commute. He has spent weeks at a time on his motorcycle in the woods camping and communing with God! Now, he hasn’t been on a motorcycle since September last year. While I am missing the grandchildren, he is missing his motorcycle! (Okay, he misses the grandchildren too. The motorcycle is a close second?! 😉 )
For a small price you can rent a scooter and ride it all over the place. When you are done riding you leave it where you stop and someone else can use it. The app tells you where to find a scooter and how much battery life it still has. While it is nowhere close to riding a motorcycle, it’s gotten Todd onto two wheels for a few minutes and he’s having fun! It’s the simple pleasure in life, right?!
We weren’t too happy to get a phone call this week about one of our missionary companionships who had ignored their carbon monoxide detector alarm all night one night. Yep. They figured it was just an alarm malfunction and didn’t do anything about it. The next morning, when it was still going off and they were, fortunately, still alive, we found out about it and went over to assess the situation and let them know how dangerous their actions were. It made my mom heart angry, honestly, and we gave them a good lecture. It looks like the alarm in their apartment had reached the end of it’s life and was just loudly expiring. We put a new alarm in the apartment and let them, and all the other missionaries, know that at the first sign of an ongoing alarm, get out of the apartment and call the senior missionaries!
We took the old alarm with us when we left and throughout the day it kept randomly going off. It was in our car, beeping, beeping. Todd took it apart. We threw it in our garbage can. Later in the day it was beeping and beeping from the garbage can! Todd took it apart some more! It wasn’t carbon monoxide poisoning at the apartment but still! Boys! Use your heads!!
Here they are — Elder Monzon & Elder Morales — trying not to feel sheepish with an old and a new CO2 alarm.
One afternoon we took a drive to a place just outside of Reykjavik, Heiðmörk, where we haven’t visited before. We stopped at lake Vífilsstaðavatn to enjoy the lupins and take in the view.
We found some of the tallest trees we’ve seen in Iceland. There aren’t that many trees this old here and it felt a little bit like Oregon.
We also stopped at Rauðhólar pseudocraters. This is a fascinating place! We didn’t have time to hike on this day but we will need to return for some hiking sometime soon. According to this website, “Pseudocraters are. . . rarely seen outside of Iceland and on the planet Mars, so they are quite an interesting phenomenon. They are formed when 1,100°C molten lava flows over ponds and swamps causing the water to boil. The pressure of the steam from the boiling water then causes explosions, which in turn creates the pseudocraters.” The geology in Iceland is incredible.
It has been a while since we needed to work on driver’s licenses, so why not start again? It is time for Elder Geertsen and Elder Moyer to start the driver’s license process. Elder Moyer is in Akureyri so it will be a new adventure to work with him, long distance, through the licensing process. But Elder Geertsen is in Reykjavik and he and his companion, Elder O’Barr, got to go with us to the District Commissioner’s office and get his application completed. Below, Elder Geertsen – far right – is excited to be back in driver’s ed! 🙂
This week I started the process to become a blood donor with the Iceland Red Cross. In my life before being a missionary I was a regular and dedicated blood donor. It is easy for me to donate and I feel a responsibility to do so. After being in Iceland for three months, Americans are eligible to donate. Well, we’ve been here eight months so it’s about time I got to it! The process is a little bit different than in the states. For my first appointment they asked several questions and checked a few vitals then they took a small sample of blood. They sent my blood in for testing and texted a couple of days later to set up my appointment for my first full donation. You can donate every four months here (that’s twice as long between donations as in America) so I should be able to donate about a half a gallon of blood before our mission is completed.
I had a knitting lesson this week with Helga. She looked over my work and said, “Don’t worry! It will get more beautiful!” I appreciate her confidence my my ability to learn how to knit. This week she showed me how to do a cable stitch and now I have more practicing ahead of me. She also helped me make a shopping list for the things I’ll need to knit a scarf. I think that will be the goal for the mission knitting: knit a scarf I am not embarrassed to wear. 🙂 I’ll keep you posted!
Todd spent a lot of time working at his computer throughout the week. He is finalizing the travel plans for the group of teenagers in Iceland who are attending FSY this summer. He is also working out the details for a big missionary weekend we have coming up June 6-8. You’ll be hearing about it, but overall it’s three days of intense scheduling and activities. He’s also constantly preparing a lesson or a talk for his upcoming responsibilities. He’s got plenty to do.
We finished this week with a couple of fun outings. On Saturday morning we met some of the elders at the Kolaportið flea market. They sell all kinds of interesting things from fresh duck eggs, shark & lamb, to handmade lopapeyas. It’s a very interesting place to spend an hour!
While I was browsing at one booth the man working there saw my badge asked me if I am a member of the church. I said I am and asked if he is! His name is Símon Sverrisson. He said he is not a member but many years ago his great great grandmother and her brother were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints living on the Westman Islands here in Iceland. They left with the Saints to immigrate to Utah. I asked him if he knows much about what we believe and he said all he knows is that his family left Iceland for Utah with the Saints. I gave him our missionary card and told him if he wants to know more we’d love to teach him. He was very kind and let me take his picture. On his phone screen is the monument dedicated to the Saints. Surprisingly, next Saturday we will be on the Westman Islands for an event commemorating missionary work in Iceland! You’ll have to wait until next week to read about that. 😉
Later Saturday we went for a walk at Hallsteinsgarður. It is a sculpture garden with 16 large sculptures by Hallsteinn Sigurðsson. It was a great walk with interesting art.
We ended our walk by the ocean, enjoying the views on this sunny afternoon. We were also amazed at these wonderful Icelandic women out for a brisk swim in the ocean! Trust me, this is not warm water. These women have Viking blood!
There were plenty of other things we did this week, but this post is long enough and we will end it here. We are finding great joy in the work of the Lord in Iceland. We love being together and serving together. Every week brings new challenges and new opportunities to exercise faith in Jesus Christ. And every week He shows us that He is walking by our side and carrying the bulk of the load. How we love our Lord! God is great. We’ll see you back here next week.
Check out Todd’s social media pages for more pictures and videos. You can find him here:
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