Næðingur frá fortíðinni (Blast from the past)

Okay, so the translation leaves something to be desired. The one disadvantage of not having Icelandic be my native language is that when I want to translate a unique English colloquialism like this one, doing so ends up proving quite difficult. The Icelandic-English dictionaries out today are better than we ever had on my mission. They provide tons of common phrases using many of the individual words in the dictionary. This helps a lot when we are trying to know the proper ways to express these unique phrases. I am happy to know though that even advanced speakers of their second language often do not understand these unique phrases which do not translate word-for-word.

I got a very cool picture in an email today from a returned missionary who served in Iceland named Rob Mikkelsen. He was there from 1976-























1978, about seven years before me. I've attached it here. This is a picture of Gerhard Guðnason the day he was baptized in the summer of 1978. He has German and Icelandic roots. The missionaries in the picture from left to right are Doug Brinton, Jerry Ohrn, (Gerhard), Rob Mikkelsen, David Knechtel and Kevin Barton. I don't know the whole story behind Gerhard's conversion to the Church back then, but I know that every one of these missionaries was very happy that day. They are even happier today because 30 years later, Gerhard is still active. I saw and spoke with him two months ago on my trip and he is doing well. It is people like Gerhard who help to keep things stable in the Church in a land, like so many others, where people come and go spiritually. Golden for these missionaries and all who have known him since.