9/27/25
Hello, again! And welcome to another episode of senior missionary work in Iceland! We are happy you are here and we are happy we are here. Here’s what we’ve been up to this week:
On Sunday we were able to attend and participate in the baptism of our friend Fortune. She is from Cameroon and is living in Iceland going to school and working. Fortune is amazing! She started learning from the missionaries right after moving to Iceland and she quickly gained a testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel. She brings so much faith and happiness to our branch and we are excited to see what is in store in her future. Fortune once told me that she hopes to one day have a marriage like Todd and I have. She likes our “vibe”! 🙂 She was baptized by Elder Moyer and is here with him and his companion, Elder Mijares.
I’m also excited to share this great picture of Doris. Doris and her son joined the church last fall. Recently, Doris was called as a counselor in our Relief Society presidency (you can learn more about Relief Society here) and she is our new branch music leader. Doris has been working with Sister Mogenhan to learn how to conduct music in our church meetings and at Fortune’s baptism Doris did! She stood up front and conducted for the first time and she did a wonderful job. She was afraid, but she did it! We can all learn from her example. Doris put in the work to learn, she depended on God to strengthen her, and she did her best despite her fears. I was so pleased with her!
Todd and I met our new friend Kent Roper on Sunday at church. Kent loves Iceland and travels here often. He made wonderful contributions to our meetings and even gave me cookies to share when he left. It was a pleasure to met him and I’m pretty sure he will read this blog so, “Hi, Kent!”
Monday was Fortune’s 25th birthday so we joined several of the missionaries and met her at work during her break for a quick birthday party. The elders brought a cake and we visited with the birthday girl, sang happy birthday, and enjoyed the quirky cafe where she works.
Below you’ll see me, then Elder Benzley, Elder Nielsen, Sister Mogenhan, Fortune, Todd, Elder Moyer, Elder Mijares, & Elder Mogenhan.
Fortune works at Café Babalú. We’ll have to go back there sometime for a meal and to check out more of the funky decor.
We had an amazing turn out for our institute/YSA night on Monday night. The class is growing and it’s so much fun! There are two friends who are learning from the missionaries who are coming to class, as well as several member YSA students and some of the missionaries. Todd taught an inspiring class about prophets, apostles, witnesses, and the authority of the priesthood. And, of course, we had a yummy dinner together, including brownies that had been prayed there! One of our YSA’s, Sarah, was overjoyed to see brownies with dinner. She said that she had prayed that I would make brownies. And I did! See! Prayers are answered! 🙂
Another prayer was answered on Tuesday when Todd and I were both notified that our residency permits for living in Iceland have been renewed for another year. On September 24, 2024 we were granted permission to live legally in Iceland for one year. The application processing time for all types of visas is currently taking a very long time. We were allowed to submit our renewal application 60 days before the expiration date of our current visas, September 24, 2025. We were assured that as long as you have an active application, if your expiration date passes you can stay legally while it is being processed. Ours was granted on September 23, 2025 for another year. Just in time! It’s good to know we can stay and finish our second year in Iceland. And here we are, at the immigration office feeling relieved!
We celebrated our actual Iceland “birthday” (September 24th) with lots of food. I made blueberry banana bread to share with friends, pumpkin pie for Todd, and Salmon chowder for lunch. I made my own evaporated milk for the first time to use in the pies. You can buy it here for about $8.00 USD a can. Or, you can make it! It worked and Todd said the pie tasted great. 🙂 And, if you ever want an incredible salmon chowder recipe give this one a try. It was excellent.
We had a bunch of work in the apartment on this day of celebration, but we made it out for a walk in the rain and saw an amazing rainbow. I figure it was Heavenly Father smiling on us through the rain! Fall is here and it is glorious!
We went for a drive on Thursday to visit our friends Ólafur & Björg and their son Matthí and his wife Shirah. They are a wonderful family who live about an hours drive north of Reykjavik and they do so much for the members of the church in Iceland. We love and appreciate them and want them to know! We took them that amazing blueberry banana bread and found Ólafur and Matthí at home. Ólafur & Björg are building a home on their property and he gave us a tour of the house. They hope to be able to move in next summer. They are making good progress! It was nice to visit with them and we are happy to be brothers and sisters in the gospel.
We enjoyed the drive to and from their home, the scenery is beautiful and stormy.
There is a tunnel you can take when driving north of Reykjavik that goes under the Hvalfjörður fjord. It makes the drive quite a bit shorter. For our drive home from our visit we skipped the tunnel and went around the fjord to enjoyed the incredible views. In this fjord are two beached whaling ships. In 1986 the whalers were sabotaged and sunk. They were later raised and beached along this fjord. You can read more about the beached whalers here. Whaling is still legal in Iceland but it faces a lot of opposition. These whalers are an interesting site and Todd enjoyed exploring them with the drone.
One more beautiful view from our drive Thursday afternoon:
I want to tell you about Elder Marchan. Months ago he received his mission call and was assigned to serve in the Denmark Copenhagen mission in Iceland. He has been preparing to join us here in January 2026. Because of visa problems from the beginning, Elder Marchan has recently been reassigned to serve his mission in Spain and will not be able to come to Iceland. Todd has had many opportunities to email with Elder Marchan about the challenges that have come to him as a result of this reassignment. Elder Marchan was so excited to come to Iceland! He prayed with faith that the visa problems would not exclude him from serving here. However, when it became clear he would not be able to join us he sent Todd a heartfelt, sincere email submitting himself to the will of the Lord, keeping his faith in Christ and not in the outcome by willingly accepting his reassignment to Spain. Elder Marchan and his mom read this blog and we wanted to let them know we are inspired by their faithful example and we know he will be an amazing missionary, wherever he serves.
In a conference talk in 2017 Elder Bednar taught about this very issue. He said, “A missionary is not called to a place; rather, he or she is called to serve. . . . Each mission call and assignment, or a later reassignment, is the result of revelation through the Lord’s servants . . . Such reassignments sometimes are necessary because of events and circumstances such as physical accidents and injuries, delays and challenges in obtaining visas, political instability, creating and staffing new missions, or the evolving and ever-changing needs around the world in the work of proclaiming the gospel. . . When a missionary is reassigned to a different field of labor, the process is precisely the same as for the initial assignment. Members of the Quorum of the Twelve seek inspiration and guidance in making all such reassignments.”
While we will miss getting to work with Elder Marchan we know he will be a great blessing to the people in Spain and we send our love and support with him. In the picture below Elder Marchan, on the right, is at the temple with his family.
We finished the week with meetings, computer work, errands, walks and we had our first big storm for this fall. There was a yellow warning across the country which brought high winds and heavy rain. It was fun to observe it from inside! Elder Benzley and Elder Nielsen were out braving the storm to do their missionary work, as were many of the other elders. A little bit of rain and wind won’t keep them from their friends!
As I finish up this post and we officially begin year two of our mission, here are a few of the projects we are currently working on:
- Planning and preparing for a mission wide Emotional Resilience class.
- Planning and preparing for an Iceland zone missionary Christmas concert.
- Working on updating missionary go-bags and food storage boxes for each apartment.
- Updating YSA/Institute rolls, and planning for future classes & activities.
- Preparing for General Conference next week.
- Preparing for our District Conference in two weeks.
- Working on ministering & cookie drop plans for next week.
- Preparing the for our upcoming October zone conference.
- Preparing for three missionaries to go home and four new missionaries to arrive in Iceland in October.
There are other things that we could add to this list, but you get the picture! One year ago I was still crying, jetlagged, & homesick. Todd was gung-ho, eager, and patient with me! Now we are neck deep in missionary work, ministering, and enjoying each others company. If you’re considering a mission we highly recommend it! There are still tears (sometimes) but mostly there are smiles. It is good to be here and serving our Lord and His people.
Thank you for loving and supporting us through this past year! If you’re not sick of us yet, stick around for year two and let’s see what happens in Iceland!
Check out Todd’s social media accounts for more photos and videos. You can find him here:
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