“Signs And Wonders In Heaven”

1/10/26

After the last several posts celebrating our way through the holidays I hope you will enjoy reading through this week’s not so exciting post. In fact, let’s start out with something very mundane . . . a car accident! We were not in an accident. No one was injured in the accident. And, it actually happened Saturday night last week and could have been in that post. But, we’ll begin with it here to help you see some of the other things we do on our mission aside from visiting waterfalls, riding scooters in the middle of the night, watching the aurora, attending meetings, doing a lot of ministering, making cookies . . . you get the point!

Late Saturday evening Todd got a phone call from Elder Nehren saying he and his companion were in an accident. They are both okay. Elder Nehren was parallel parking their car and he stepped on the gas instead of the brakes. He ran into the back of the parked truck in front of them and the truck’s hitch had gone through the the front of their car, broken the radiator, and the cars were now stuck together. The elders didn’t know what to do so they called us. This is what we found when we got there:

When we left on our mission we didn’t realize that serving along side of 18-20 year old young men would be like having a bunch of teenaged sons who would need support and guidance when they do teenage boy things. Having never raised sons, we are getting our share of the antics with this group! Elder Nehren was absolutely sick about what he had done. It was an accident, but it was his fault and he took responsibility for it.

It’s been very cold the last week or so and that night was no exception. I spent a couple of hours sitting in our warm car with Todd, Elder Nehren, & Elder Jensen rotating through when they needed to warm up. It took some time for the police to come and make the report, contact with the truck owner to be made, a tow truck to arrive and figure out how to separate the vehicles, and for the elder’s car to be taken away.

The police were kind and Elder Nehren survived the phone calls he needed to make afterwards. We told him to remember this experience in the future when, someday, he has a son who does something like this. Maybe this will help him be a compassionate father as he deals with these types of avoidable accidents. We got them home late that night and were glad there were no injuries.

A few days later when Todd and I were talking with Elder Nehren he paid us quite the compliment. He said that right after he hit the truck he thought of who he had to call. He had to call the police and he had to call the mission president. But first he called the Richardson’s. He said the only call he was not afraid to make was to us. He said he trusts us, he knows we love him, and he knew we would help. He wasn’t afraid to come to us for that help. It was such a wonderful thing to hear from a humble young elder who was mortified by something he had done but he felt safe coming to us for help.

His comments made me think of this quote from President Holland. He said, “However late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.”

We all do things we regret and we all want to know we can turn to someone who will not be angry but who will love us, support us, and help us fix what we have done wrong. Our Savior will do that for all of us. He will not be angry when we come to Him in our sins and mistakes. He will continue to love us when we come to Him for help and forgiveness. While I’m sorry Elder Nehren had this accident, I appreciate the lessons I’ve learned from it and I am grateful he felt he could turn to us for help and support.

And now on to other random things we did this week:

We took an evening drive one night early in the week, hoping to see the aurora. It wasn’t out, but a beautiful full moon was hovering over a half frozen lake. Todd stood out in the frigid wind to take pictures while I watched him, again from the warm car! It was a beautiful night.

We had a phone meeting with our district leader, who happens to be Elder Nehren, on Tuesday morning. (I didn’t mean to talk about him so much this week! But here he is!) The district leader has weekly interviews over the phone with each companionship in his district. The Iceland North district only has two young missionary companionships and two senior companionships. Elder Nehren decided he wanted to do phone interviews with the senior couples too. I appreciate that! He asked us how our companionship is going and how we feel about the work we are doing. He asked us to evaluate him, as a district leader. He gave us things to work on and will check in with us again next week. We appreciate his diligence.

We took a P-day outing to The Settlement Museum in downtown Reykjavik. You can read all about it here. The museum starts underground with the ruins of a Viking longhouse and has displays that take you through the development of the city to current times. At the end of the display you step into the oldest wood house in Reykjavik. It was fascinating!

Here is a model of what the longhouse would have looked like. Eight to ten people would have lived in this longhouse, along with their animals

The turf wall below is one of the oldest man made structures found in Iceland.

We worked our way through the museum and came to this diorama of Reykjavik in the early 1900’s. The display was super cool! You could look through the headsets and zoom in on the houses and see and hear holographic images of people moving through the city, walking and talking together, doing things that would have been happening at that time and place.

And the museum ends at the oldest wooden house in Reykjavik. It was constructed in 1762. It stands on the street with other homes and buildings that date back hundreds of years. We enjoyed our afternoon learning more about the history of this interesting city.

We had our north district council meeting on Wednesday over zoom. The theme of the meeting was baptism and everyone (except for me) dressed all in white! Isn’t this a good looking group?! Below you will see Elder & Sister Hutchings next to us and on the bottom we’ve got Elder Nehren, Elder Jensen, Elder Nielsen & Elder Bredthauer.

The missionaries discussed all the people they are teaching and talked through how we can focus on the goal of baptism and why making that covenant is so important. If anyone wants to return to live with God again after this life, we must be baptized and make covenants with Him. One of the ways we do this is through baptism. You can read more about baptism here. Is there anything in your life you feel this strongly about?!

Elder Nehren made this picture of the north district and I think it is hilarious! How do we look?

I also want to recognize some great teaching that was done by our zone leaders in a mission wide zoom call. They shared great information about finding and teaching as missionaries. These are sharp, inspired men. Below is L-R: Elder Monzon, Elder Moyer, & Elder Benzley

We got three Christmas cards in the mail this week and it made my day! We rarely get mail and it was a real treat to find three letters in the box. Thank you to the Hunters, the Somsens, & the Wrights for dropping cards in the mail all the way to Iceland! 🙂 Also, our daughter Rachel, gave us a Christmas gift that has an envelope to open every few weeks. Each envelope has a couple of puzzle pieces inside. In the summer we will open the final envelope and get to put the puzzle together.

Another terrific Christmas gift we got was from Todd’s brother Steve & his amazing wife, Jean. They gave us grocery money! Basically, Steve wants Todd to buy some meat. We are happy to do so! We splurged this week on salad dressing and ribs. Thanks to Steve & Jean we felt spoiled and bought several things we normally wouldn’t have spent money on.

Todd made some price comparison pictures so you can see what we spend here on something compared to what it costs back at home. Buying these things in America would have cost us $26.51. In Iceland we spent $62.03. What do you think?

The weather this winter in Iceland is very unusual. It is very dry. We haven’t had much snow or rain, just some cold temperatures and wind. We made it out for a walk one afternoon and enjoyed the sunshine in the middle of the day.

We had a good visit with Helga. She’s been sick and was nice enough to wear a mask to save us from her germs. But she was so welcoming and we love seeing her. We got talking about her childhood and she told us that on her third birthday, May 10, 1940, Iceland was invaded by Britain in order to keep it safe from a Nazi invasion. Germany had conquered Denmark and Britain occupied Iceland to protect the country. On that birthday she received this duck as a present and she has treasured it her whole life.

Of course we also did some knitting. I’ve gotten started on my sweater and Helga was quick to point out the few small errors I’ve already made! I was secretly hoping she wouldn’t notice. 😉 But overall she is happy with how things are going. Here is where I am at after week one, starting at the bottom of the sweater. I’ll try and post a picture each week so you can see my progress!

We finished our week off with a church cleaning project with some of the missionaries. All over the world on Saturday mornings people are cleaning their church buildings and getting them ready for Sunday. It’s a worthwhile project to participate in and I’m grateful for our fellow missionaries who worked hard to get our building spruced up.

Below Elder Jensen & Elder Nehren are moping up while Todd washes the windows.

Elder Chynoweth & Elder Geertsen spent time with magic erasers and floor scuffs while Sister & Elder Mogenhan vacuum & sweep.

God is great. We love and honor Him and we appreciate the gifts, signs, and wonders He is continually giving to us. Thank you for joining us to experience them! We’ll see you again next week! Let us know what signs and wonders you see as God works in your life.

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

https://www.facebook.com/todd.e.richardson.2025

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