5/24/25
Hello Friends! Welcome to our week in review. Let’s get started with a few good things that happened on Sunday.
During church on Sunday I had a meeting with Reddys Peña. She is the new relief society president in the Spanish branch and she and I met to do some training. The problem is, Reddys only speaks a little bit of English and I don’t speak any Spanish! We had Elder Monzon join us to translate so we could clearly understand each other. It was a great meeting and Reddys is going to be a wonderful relief society president for the women in her branch.
During the 1st branch sacrament meeting I sat with Alex, a new friend who is learning from the missionaries and came to Iceland from Ukraine. It was his first time to participate in the sacrament and he quietly asked me what was going on. I told him that we were renewing our promises to Heavenly Father, telling Him that we will keep those promises in the upcoming week. (If you’d like to understand more about the sacrament, click here.) When it was Alex’s turn to take the bread he picked it up and whispered “I promise” before eating it. I was really touched by his desire to please Heavenly Father even when he didn’t fully understand what the sacrament is.
During Sunday School I sat by a woman named Faith. She is from Africa and came to church with her friend who is also named Faith. (That Faith is getting baptized on Sunday!) It was her first time in church and she was full of questions. At one point she asked “How do I keep the commandments?” She was very sincere and wanted to know how to be right before God. We connected her with the elders and they set up an appointment to teach her how to keep the commandments and many other things. Throughout our meetings I was very inspired by the simple, pure faith in Jesus Christ that was being displayed by these new friends.
After church our friend Michell was baptized. She has been learning from the missionaries for some time and it was a pleasure to see her take this step and make her first covenants with God. She will be a great blessing to the Spanish branch.
On Sunday evening we had a zone meeting to talk about and review the goals for the missionary work in Iceland. There is still a lot of work to do in order to meet the goals the elders set at the beginning of 2025. But they can do it and we will help them all we can!
Just to give you an example of some of the interesting things we get to do as senior missionaries, here is one unpleasant task we got to deal with this week: bathroom mold. One of the young missionary apartments has a reputation for being pretty yucky. Apparently there has been a mold problem in the bathroom there for years. The apartment has other issues as well.
After transfers two weeks ago our zone leaders moved into the infamous Kópavogur apartment. We went to visit them and got a full tour of the genuinely frightening bathroom situation. We delivered bleach & rubber gloves, and I gave them a detailed lesson in bleach safety. Those boys spent two days cleaning mold in the bathroom as well as deep cleaning the rest of the apartment, getting rid of excess furniture, and throwing out the trash. The landlord came to inspect the problems and was pleased with the work the boys had done. There are more problems to deal with there, but for now things are a little bit more livable. 🙂 (As my daughter Rebekah reminded me, at least they have a shower. In her husband’s mission in Mexico they did not!)
Below left, Elder Fischbeck (who happened to be visiting on the cleaning day, lucky guy) with Elder Nielsen & Elder Nehren.
Below right, the landlord didn’t evict us! He said he’d never seen the apartment so clean. It’s a credit to Elder Nielsen & Elder Nehren’s hard work.
We had quite the crowd show up for YSA/Institute on Monday night. Every seat was full and I was so excited about it I made them all smile for a picture! Our numbers have been small and it was fun to have a few more people join us for dinner, a lesson, and games. Maybe the warm weather will mean more participation?!
Below, starting bottom left: Audrius, Yaw, Davið, Elder Nehren, Todd, Melena, Jacyntha, Elder Nielsen, Elder Monzon, Jakob. Another friend, Zion, showed up a bit later.
A while ago I shared a picture of our neighborhood swans who were nesting down the road from us. Their babies have hatched and now we see them paddling around the pond and walking along the bank. One evening we walked down to see them and we spent several minutes enjoying watching this adorable family. The babies are so fluffy! Mom & dad weren’t bothered by us and Todd took some family portraits. We love the Icelandic whopper swans.
Mid-week we had a couple of days of administration work. Every month or so we need a day or two at our computers to catch up on all of the work that has come our way. It makes for some pretty exciting pictures! 😉
Here are some of the things we were working on:
- Preparing talks for Sunday’s sacrament meeting – including translation preparation in Icelandic & Spanish (thank you, Chatgpt!)
- Writing and answering emails on a variety of topics – FSY, apartment maintenance, incoming missionaries, district business, etc.
- Updating spreadsheets with incoming missionary information — there are five young men with mission calls to Iceland who will be here between October & January.
- Formatting a meeting agenda for an upcoming leadership meeting.
- Working on FSY registration and funding details, including calls to England for help from area support.
- Other phone calls to London & to Denmark about all sorts of things!
- Lesson preparation
- And, a few more emails . . . you get the picture.
For the first half of the week we had incredible weather. Blue sky, sunshine, record breaking temperatures. But on Thursday the weather changed, the wind blew in, and the rain came back. Just in time for this I bought a darling little lobelia for our deck. It was a sunny day at the start of the week. We stopped in the garden center and the flowers and plants were calling to me. At home I would be filling pots with flowers and I couldn’t resist getting some delicate flowers to enjoy here! I enjoyed my lobelia in the sunshine for one day. Then, she took a beating from the wind and now who knows how long she will endure! Why didn’t I buy her 10 days ago??! Here she is, with her wind swept flowers. At least we can enjoy the wind together! 🙂
In between projects I made a batch of chocolate crinkles so we could do some ministering visits and deliveries before the end of the week. Chocolate crinkles are always a hit! Delicious! (Here is the recipe, in case you need to make some.)
For one visit we stopped to see Helga, my knitting teacher. While Helga is not a member of the church, she is a lovely woman, a good teacher, and very sweet. We figured she deserved some chocolate for putting up with my bad knitting. She invited us in for a visit and we enjoyed her hospitality and the wonderful views from her 5th story apartment. She also told us the incredible story about meeting her half sister for the first time several years ago. Now, in their 80’s, they have each other as sisters and friends. Amazing!
We made several other cookie drop off visits. They are always an adventure, especially because about 75% of the time the GPS coordinates in our tools app take us to the wrong place. And, most address don’t list apartment numbers. It makes it kind of a treasure hunt combined with a wild goose chase. The reward comes when we do find the right address, or, when we are at the wrong address but the person who lives there still takes a plate of cookies and our pass-along card! This happened once this week. 🙂
We spent a good chunk of time walking around downtown looking for one sister’s home. The GPS actually took us to a bar, which we knew was incorrect. But while we were searching we found these friends! I think the little gnome is kind of adorable but Todd’s contact wouldn’t even talk to him.
We finally realized the GPS was, obviously, wrong so we tried another neighborhood, checking four different apartment buildings without success. I finally called her to see if she could give us directions and she let me know she’s not interested in cookies and don’t worry about coming by. 🙂 While we didn’t find her, we did deliver the rest of our cookies and had a fun night out together.
We also found a couple of cruise ships while we were out delivering. Cruise ship season is in full swing. I’m not sure if you can tell how really huge this ship in the top picture is. I couldn’t even get a full photo of it, but just looking at it peeking out from behind those trees reminds me of my littlest grandchildren playing hide & seek! I can still see you. 🙂 These large ships dock outside of downtown, not far from where we live.
And here is a smaller one docked right downtown.
We finished out the week with a seriously hard day for me. Nothing is wrong except I just spent most of Saturday in tears feeling very homesick. I was doubting myself and if I’m making any difference here. I was wondering why we aren’t home with our girls and their families. I was concerned that I’m not doing enough. I don’t know what brought all this on, but it was miserable. While I type this (on Saturday evening) my eyes are still tired from all the crying today. I’m sure it is a combination of hormones, stress, and good old homesickness. But I also know that Heavenly Father is stretching me and trying me and shaping me into something new and something better.
In 2011 Elder Christofferson gave a general conference talk called “As Many as I love, I Rebuke and Chasten”. You can read the whole talk here. In the talk he tells the story about a currant bush that needed to be pruned in order to bear fruit. Todd and I watched this movie earlier this week and, today, I was really feeling the pruning. Here’s a great 3 minute video of this story you can watch:
Todd was the best husband and companion all day. (Well, he always is.) He let me cry. He held me and prayed with me and gave me a blessing. He got me out of the house to go for a walk. He listened with patience and didn’t get angry. He’s wonderful and it helped me feel better.
On our walk we discovered the Recycled House just outside of downtown. It’s a unique place full of scrap metal sculptures and all kinds of unique odds & ends.
After viewing the recycling I took a long walk along the bay into downtown where Todd met me. After a couple miles and some fresh air I was feeling better.
Senior missions are really something. Whether it’s administrative work, moldy bathrooms, young missionary issues, district issues, visiting branch members, doing laundry, cooking for YSA . . . it’s never boring. But it is sometimes stressful. I’m glad we’re here. I do miss our family. Over the next six weeks or so we have some of our daughter’s and their husbands coming to see us. You’ll see them in future posts! I’m glad they are coming and will sorely miss those who cannot make it. I know Heavenly Father is mindful of us and mindful of them. I also know that He is aware of the offering we are giving Him of being separated from our family for this time. Sometimes there is sunshine and sometimes there is rain . . . and tears. But He is aware of it all.
Check out Todd’s social media pages for more pictures and videos. You can find him here:
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