September Birthdays

Surprisingly we only have one September birthday in our family - hard to believe with 35 people in our family now. So it shouldn't be that hard to guess who the birthday person is this month.

Böðvar Ragnarsson´s Baptism

We had another baptism in Selfoss today - well we had to go to Reykjavík for the baptism but Böðvar lives in Selfoss where we have been teaching him. He is another individual where the Gospel of Jesus Christ has truly changed his life. When we picked him up today to go to Reykjavík he was standing outside his apartment with a big grin on his face. He is so happy now. When we first started teaching him that was not the case but having the Holy Ghost teaching him the truth of the Gospel has brought true joy into his life.

The other picture in this post is Sister Bremner preparing treats for the baptism. Somehow a spoon fell into the chocolate batter unnoticed and when she turned on the beaters the spoon and the beaters flew all over the kitchen. When she saw the picture she said that doesn´t really show the mess and I will agree - it was much worse

Myths and Reality About What We Believe

This video does not answer all questions about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints but it is a start.

Seminary and Institute Opening Activity

Following the great teacher training we received from Brother Jensen we had a potluck lunch and then moved into our opening Seminary and Institute activity. We began with an introduction of teachers and classes and then showed the movie The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd. Then Brother Jensen spoke about the value of Seminary and Institute and how our testimonies of the Savior will grow as we participate in these classes. The movie and Brother Jensen's comments were a special spiritual beginning for the new year. We then moved to activities that an energetic fun couple had planned for the afternoon. We asked them to plan outdoor activities with a back up for indoors. Just as we went to leave the building it started raining and we made a quick change to indoor activities. We ended the day with a pizza dinner.

Excellect Teacher Training

With our Seminary responsibilities, Sister Bremner and I were excited to see our planning unfold this Saturday. We were not disappointed when the first of the two big events was very successful. It started with the blessing of having Elder Eckehard Jensen provide a two hour teacher training session for all the teachers. Elder Jensen is a previous Stake President and Regional Representative. He is currently our Church Education Director. The two hours went by so fast as he is an excellent teacher. Saturday was a very busy day so we started the training at 10 AM (which some Icelanders told us is too early to start meetings) but attendance was great and then we enjoyed a potluck that I think you can tell by the pictures was enjoyed by all.

District Meeting/Pizza Tasting

As I said in the last post this is how we tasted the least expensive pizza for our Seminary/Institute opening activity. Today we had a great District Meeting with training by our two Danish missionaries (past Assistants to the President) and our own Assistant to the President. All three gave excellent training and as always the Spirit testified to the truth of what they were teaching - great meeting. Then after the meeting we treated the missionaries to pizza. All the missionaries said it was very good pizza and I thought it was good too except the banana ham one was a little odd. It seems bananas on pizza if very normal here in Iceland.

Ice Cream Day

I am not sure why I am so far behind on up dating our blog but we have been busy with missionary work and branch work. We are also in charge of the opening activity for Seminary and Institute in Iceland which is tomorrow. I think we have it all together now so we can relax a little. We never know how many people will actually show up so we took a different approach on the food this time. For the closing activity in May we were told 50 people would come and we prepared more than enough food in case more showed up. We didn´t have 50 and we had food left over. So this time we decided to wait until just before it is time to eat, count how many we have to feed and go get pizza and bread sticks. We had one of our young ladies take us to 3 pizza places to find the best prices and then in the next post you will see how we tried out the pizza from the least expensive place. Based on the numbers projected we will be far enough under budget we could have another 10 people surprise us and still have money to cover it.

Any way the pictures are from last Saturday´s Flower Days closing celebration in Hveragerði. The flowers are not looking so good as the weather has turned cold but they make up with it by the local ice cream company serving free samples of the various ice creams they make. I will say we have actually seen very few of these in the stores. One is rather surprising sounding - Tuna-fish. There was also rhubarb which was one of my favorite because you could actually taste a distinct difference as the others all tasted similar. Never did taste the Tuna-fish as the crowd was almost too much and after getting ice cream on my suit I decided to get out of the way. The young man (17) with the young lady is one of our great members. He is German/Icelandic and speaks German, Danish, Icelandic and English.