Monday, April 4
This is how we start out our day, every day . . . I get ready first, and when I come out of the bathroom, Terry has our bed made and his clothes out and ready to wear. He 'loves' to iron, for real, and irons at least twice during the week. He always asks me, 'do you have anything you want ironed?". This same routine has been going on now for 45+ years. (
I bet some of you are saying, I didn't know a redneck knew how to iron :)
Because we work in the Archives and sometimes the books can are old and sometimes dusty, we 'get' to wear dress down clothes. No white shirts and ties for Terry and no skirts or dresses for me. We were both advised from the Family Search department to 'dress down.....no complaints from us on this requirement. Every once in a while, someone will say "you two have the perfect mission"....every time we say "YES WE DO" :)
Also, because we are not at the Archive to do missionary work or represent our Church, we don't wear our black missionary name badges. We are at the Archive representing Family Search. therefore, we wear their name badge. We love BOTH of our name badges.
Let's talk about RED, GREEN, and YELLOW lights for a minute. What we are use to in America, is if the light is GREEN, you are good to go. If it turns YELLOW, that means slow down and prepare to stop. Not here in Iceland. RED means STOP. YELLOW means GET READY TO GO. And GREEN means just keep going until you see RED.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again . . I'm REALLY grateful I have an awesome chauffeur. Ha, we were here about a month when I noticed this light pattern was different. When I said something to Terry about it, he said, "where have you been?". Ha, I already admitted, I just gawk out the windows and always finding something amazing an beautiful to look at :)
Note: I am not saying one way or another is right or wrong, I'm just saying this is a little different than what we're use to :)
So here is your test . . . what does this picture above mean? If you said, it is YELLOW, GET READY TO GO, YOU'RE RIGHT!
Tuesday, April 5
We have found if we leave a little early, or a little late, each morning we run in to this. TRAFFIC. You an see the tail lights in front of us and headlights coming towards us. We love it when we find the perfect window and just sail in perfectly. Even with the worse traffic, it still only takes us about 20 minutes if the traffic is backed up. Usually only around 10ish :)
Look what we got today at the Archive! The camera operation we were trained on two months ago in Utah. Ha, the guy you see in the picture is Andy. He works in the Family Search office in Germany (however he is from the UK). He was really smart, but I'm pretty sure I made him crazy....to say the least. Since he was only going to be there for three days, I literally made him go SLOW and I wrote down EVERYTHING he said in a Standard Operating Procedure format. The way the manual explains everything and the way we do things are a little different because of the Scanner we will be using as well.....we just want to have everything perfect. At first he laughed at me, then he got it, and was awesome.
See those boxes, those are what all of the books are stored in. Sometimes in the big boxes, there are two smaller books, and sometimes it is just a REALLY BIG BOOK. The handwriting in the books are like a work of art. I'm thinking if you couldn't write beautiful, then you probably couldn't be a Priest/Pastor. Look at a sample of the books in the pictures below.
Just because . . . I caught Terry 'looking/thinking'. . . . not sure what about. Probably how if his wife wasn't such a Western Icelander he wouldn't be here . . . Ha. He is really loving it and everyone who meets him, just loves him too (Iceland will never be the same after he teaches everyone all of his Terryisms, as we call them). However, I'm sure he thinks that, sometimes . . and that's just fine :)
I snapped this picture Tuesday night about 9:15. The sun was setting, the clouds were low far off, yet the sky was clear in Reykjavik. The days are starting to get pretty long, it won't be long until we have 24 hours of daylight. P.S. The kitchen window is still the favorite place in our apartment.
Wednesday, April 6
Terry thought this Jeep was pretty cool looking, so there you go. He snapped this picture while 'waiting' for the RED light to turn YELLOW.
Here is a picture for you. Maybe you can tell us what is in those big white containers. Terry is usually pretty good and identifying whatever it is, but he couldn't figure out this one.
Thursday, April 7
Here's the book we were copying, you can see it is from 1848-1855. It is a fairly small book, not like some of the REALLY big ones. I feel sorry for the poor Pastors who had to carry those books from home to home, and village to village. The big ones are really heavy.
This is inside the front cover. Isn't the handwriting pretty, almost like a piece of artwork.
This is the first turn of the page. The reason the page on the left is brown and the one on the right is white, is because the page on the left has been damaged sometime during the past 150 years. There is a department at the Archive that restores any damaged book. They do an amazing job. Sometimes the paper feels paper thin and other times it feels like card stock almost.
Now take a look at this, and count them . . . one, two,
three,
four monitors.
That means four hard drives too, plus the Archives main server. WOWSER! We are becoming very techie! Now you know why I needed a Standard Operating Procedure . . . totally necessary to keep things straight in this old head.
Now let me introduce you to something VERY SPECIAL here in Iceland. The little people! Yes, their are many stories that go way back in their Saga's, talking about the little people. Elves, some are hidden, some are seen. The first time I came to Iceland in 1996 I learned about many of the folktales regarding the little people. More on this subject later, but for now, if you're a Western Icelander, you SHOULD have little people in your flower garden. The two little people in my picture are trying to hide, but I found them :)
Friday, April 8
And we're up and running the new camera equipment. We'll capture images from the smaller books with the camera and the larger books with the scanner.
Here's a quick peek of my SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) before it was not quite perfected.
These two screens looked oh so familiar two months ago in Utah, now we're like, uh, what were we suppose to do from here . . .
Most Archives have between six minimum and up to 30ish volunteers likes ourselves. So, there is always someone who 'knows' how to do everything, always, at the other locations. So here we are on this little island, out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and WE'VE GOT THIS! We have modern technology, we have Benedikt at the Archive, and we have GREAT help from above.
We celebrated our week of victory with a movie on the 'big screen' in our apartment. We watched Miracle on the Mountain. It's a movie about family and why we should always love them. It has Patty Duke in it, and we really enjoyed it. Gotta love Netflix :) If you have it, grab your family and enjoy a good movie.
A friend from Singapore sent this to me Friday, it's exactly what I needed to hear. When I read the six reasons why I should trust the Lord, they resonated with me. I knew the words were true. I know He knows my name and yours too. I wonder what He thinks about me? My hope is I don't 'stress Him out' but rather be a helpmate for Him. I know He will fight for me and for you. I appreciate knowing that He is my refuge. I'm grateful He has a plan for me, I pray that I will trust His plan. I hope you trust Him to with your plan. And last but not least, He is always with me and with you.
Saturday, April 9
Saturday morning after we got our laundry done, chores finished, and grocery shopping done, we decided to go for a ride. We have been looking at the view above from our apartment window for almost two months two, we decided to take a drive and see for ourselves what was across the fjords. What we saw was MAGNIFICENT! We stopped at 45 minutes and turned around. We could have kept driving for another two hours, to the peek or tip of the island.
Below is a bunch of random pictures I took, some remind me of home, some make we wish I lived there, and others make me feel really grateful I don't live there. Enjoy!
This is the town we were headed to, Akranes.
We didn't know what these signs were trying to tell us per se, until wow, there it was just around the turn, a tunnel. A LONG TUNNEL. It took us almost six minutes to drive through the tunnel.
The saying is true, there is LIGHT at the end of the tunnel. Because we were not expecting the tunnel, we didn't even notice what we were driving through. When we got out of the tunnel, I took a look at our best friend, Google Maps on our phone, and then we could see we had just driven UNDER the water. Amazing!
You can see the blue dot by Reykjavik is where we started, and the red icon Akranes is where we were headed. The yellow road line is where the tunnel is.
More pictures along the way.
Poor Terry, he probably wants to put a piece of tape across my mouth. I asked him what those two big tanks were for. He gave me his best thoughts, but we're still not sure :)
Beautiful beach but notice nobody is swimming .. Brrrr!
I love the cute little houses, they are so colorful, so clean and well kept, and just cozy looking. He said well would you want to live there? I said YES, with my sister for two months! Are you up for that, sister?!?!
We are anxious for summer to come so we can see what happens to these 'bumps' of grass. Maybe the sheep will graze here.
We loved seeing their irrigation system. Terry said LIL, are you taking a picture of that? I said Yup. He laughed and said, your dad, the farmer, would be proud of you :)
Now that's a church with beach front property
This is a house and little family farm with beach front property as well, not to mention a beautiful view. I just wonder what it was like in the 'olden days', when the toilet was outside. Oh my, I'm sure this family celebrated the day they got indoor plumbing.
Were headed back home now, towards Reykjavik. See the yellow arrow, that is the BIGGEST landmark in all of Reykjavik, it is 73 meters or 239 feet high. You can also see a few of the high rises in the area. It was a beautiful day.
This is a picture of the church, you can see how big it is. You can take an elevator to the top and take a gander east, west, north, and south. The name of the church is Hallgrimskirkja, it is a beautiful Lutheran Cathedral.
Now we're back on 'our side' of the mountain. It was a lovely drive, with beautiful spring weather, and an abundance of God's beauty to enjoy.
We are SO GRATEFUL for our modern technology that assists us getting around, understanding languages besides English, and how to figure out what we're paying for items at the store. Those items are all circle in RED. We love the warm weather, 43 fahrenheit is the highest (warmest) we've seen so far, GREEN circle. But our MOST FAVORITE app are the two circled in BLUE. These two, plus FaceTime keeps us connected to our family and those we love most.
Sunday, April 10
Lucky us, we had visitors for Sunday dinner. I can tell you they cleaned off their plates, twice :) Ha! I didn't know until today that some angels wore shirts, ties, and big smiles. Last week I heard there are 74,000+ of these young men and women serving world wide. What a blessing they are to thousands of people. They warmed our hearts today with their smiles, ambition, and desire to make the world a better place.
Oldungurs (Elder): Geslison (he's a Western Icelander too), Rodriguez, Wight, and Ponz.
It's time to sign off for this week. Smile, remember God knows you and loves you, very much. Bless someones life this week, and we will do our best to do the same.
Bless bless,
Terry and Lil
