Slow Recovery

1/18/25

Todd and I both spoke in the Reykjavik 1st branch sacrament meeting. I gave a very short talk, with a very hoarse voice. Todd talked about building a center of strength for the church in Iceland, a message he has been giving throughout the district. During the second hour of church I taught our Relief Society lesson, with a very hoarse voice, and Todd spoke in the Reykjavik 2nd branch sacrament meeting, giving the same talk. In Relief Society we studied the talk, “Days Never to Be Forgotten” by Elder Stevenson. It is very inspiring!

Sunday evening was also full of meetings. I had a zoom meeting with my friend Bettina and with Anna-Maria Muhonen who is the Area Organization Advisor for the Baltic and Nordic countries in the Europe North Area. We discussed relief society training for the women leaders in the Iceland district. Anna-Maria is in Finland and Bettina and I are in Iceland.

Following that meeting we had an Iceland Zone meeting to discuss goals, plans, and the mission theme of “We are a mission of miracles!” for 2025. We were taught by our zone leaders, Elder Nehren & Elder Morales. And we agreed to work toward the inspired goals set by the mission leaders for our mission in 2025. These boys are hard workers, we know they can do it! We will watch for the miracles that will make it happen.

You can probably imagine that we went to bed exhausted. It was a great day to be a missionary!

I wanted to share a couple of interesting things about groceries in Iceland. There are several different grocery store options, but I’ve come to really enjoy shopping at Krónan. It’s a nice store with reasonable prices and we can find most of the things we need there. But there are two things, specifically, that I really like about Krónan. First, as you walk into the produce section of every Krónan, there is a small fruit display that looks like this:

The translation says, “Bites for the kids while you shop!” Children can eat free fruit while they shop with their parents. I love this so much! They have little kids carts too, and I’ve occasionally seen children pushing their little carts around while eating fresh fruit. It is amazing. Every store should have this.

Another thing we love about Krónan are its discount sections. They have places where they put discounted produce that is a bit sad but still perfectly edible. They have another place where they have discounted meat that is nearing its expiration, etc. We are budget friendly shoppers! So we like to check out the discounted prices. There is often a lot of lamb in the discount section, but we’ve also found pork, chicken, & seafood. It’s good for our wallets. However, we’ve learned the importance of using Google translate to be sure about what we are getting on sale. We liked the price on this lamb, but we didn’t buy it because we still aren’t sure what it is! Maybe you can tell? This is the same piece of lamb that we tried to translate twice — does it sound appealing to you?? Sorry, no blood bruises or boiled blood marrow for us today.

One wonderful thing we found in the discount meat was this salmon filet. It was incredible! Yummy!

We’ve also found interesting things in Costco — things we’ve never seen in our Oregon Costco. We haven’t tried any of these yet, but maybe after a year or so in Iceland we will give them a try?! What do you think?

And, one more interesting grocery store find. Do you want fresh lettuce? We’ve got fresh lettuce. I wonder if I put this in some soil if I could keep harvesting off it?!

On both Sunday and Monday I really over did just about everything. On those days I decided to pretend I wasn’t still sick and just do our regular work. Sunday was packed. Monday I cleaned the apartment, we ran some errands (like to Krónan), I did my part of the YSA dinner assignment, and we attended YSA and institute night at the church. I was able to do all these things but by Monday night I was feeling really awful. Again. Not that I was getting sick again, just that I wasn’t well yet and needed to be aware of that.

On Tuesday I was saying my morning prayers, feeling lousy, and wishing I was healthy so we could get back to work. I had a very clear impression from Heavenly Father while I was praying. He told me that my job this week is to let myself be sick so I can get better. I know this isn’t rocket science, but shifting my perspective in this way was really helpful. Instead of feeling bad that I wasn’t doing the things I thought I should be doing, the Holy Ghost instead reminded me that the thing I needed to be doing this week was letting myself be sick so I can get better. Once I started thinking about my illness this way, I felt less guilty about resting and tried to relax. It made a big difference for the next couple of days. We mostly stayed home. The errands we did were small. And I let myself rest and recover.

Our week of zoom meetings continued with a zoom district meeting on Wednesday. While I was well enough I could have attended in person, technology is wonderful and allows us to participate from home when needed. Also, we are in the Iceland North district which includes Akureyri. So each week, whether we meet in person in Reykjavik or not, the Akureyri missionaries join on zoom.

And, I had a great video chat with my mom & my sisters. I’m so grateful for these good women and the support and love they are giving to us.

One afternoon we went for a short walk down the beach near our apartment. It’s close by and a really beautiful spot. When the tide is out, this beach is exposed and is covered with sea shells! We had a few warmer days this week with wind and rain. The snow and ice melted away and we enjoyed some fresh air.

By Friday I was finally really starting to feel better. While the cough is lingering, the other symptoms are clearing up and I am regaining some energy. Since we both needed to get out of the house we took advantage of calm weather and drove downtown to take a stroll along the bay. It was a good choice for an outing. Our first stop was at the Sun Voyager sculpture. “It is a dream boat and an ode to the sun. It represents the promise of undiscovered territory and a dream of hope, progress and freedom.” We enjoyed the incredible views across the bay.

This is Mount Esja. We can see her from our apartment and I’ll never get tired of this view. She is a beauty.

We walked along the bay until we got to Harpa. Harpa is a concert hall in Reykjavik that was built in 2011. It has a beautiful and unique style that is stunning from the inside and the outside.

We grabbed a selfie with an Icelandic folk/indie group who were doing a photo shoot at Harpa. They are performing there soon and were happy to pose with us. We thought they were taking prom pictures! 🙂 What a surprise for them to have two missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hop in for a selfie!

We finished our wandering by enjoying the Wind Harp sculpture outside the concert hall. “An ‘Aeolian harp,’ the sculpture is designed to produce sonic overtones as the wind travels through it. Its name comes from Norse mythology, and means ‘transparent, shining, and small wave.’” We didn’t get to hear it playing while we were there, but if it sounds as lovely as it looks we’ll look forward to hearing it when we have another chance to visit.

Harpa is built right over the edge of the bay. There are docks along the bay with large ships of all shapes and types that were coming and going and secured along the dock.

At the end of the week we attended our first Icelandic class. Four of the young elders in Reykjavik are teaching free Icelandic classes each Friday evening. They started a new round this week and had advertised to the community in hopes of helping people learn Icelandic. Todd and I can use all the help we can get! We’ve decided to attend to support the elders and to see if there is anything our old brains will pick up that might help us with Icelandic while we are living here.

Elder Nielsen (left) and Elder Fischbeck welcome us to class:

There were six other students aside from Todd & I attending and they divided us up into three groups. Beginner (starting with the alphabet and basic pronunciation) – Intermediate (verbs) – advanced (adjectives). Let’s just say that while we started in the beginner group I probably would have done better in the pre-beginner group!

Elder Nielsen (standing, second from left) and Elder Moyer (standing, far left) worked to teach us the alphabet, both the names of the letters and the sounds they make. And, most of the letters make multiple sounds depending on where they are placed in a word and what other letters are near them. Yep! Confusing! (I know, I know, English does this too.) We plan to review the alphabet throughout the week and go back to class next Friday and see what they think we can learn on week two!

Maybe this will help!

Thank you for joining us for another week in Iceland. It has been a bit of a slow week, again, as I’ve continued to recover from this illness. We’re not sure if it has been Covid, flu, or RSV, but it’s been pretty rough. However, I’m just about better and we are happy to be able to be getting back to work. We see blessings and miracles around us daily. We love working with the young missionaries and seeing the good they are doing in their work. And, we are developing a deep love for the good people in Iceland. This is a wonderful place to work with the Lord and feel His love for His people! We’ll see you next week for more adventures.

Check out Todd’s social media for more pictures and videos:

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

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