Iceland - Day 6

I walked down to the bookstore with William & Katrece this morning first thing to look for post cards for my collection. I also wanted to buy an English / Icelandic dictionary and had a small paperback variety picked out. But what on earth was the price? The tag either said 4,245 or 4.245 - it was really hard to tell but made a great difference in what I would be paying. Finally, I went to the clerk to ask the price. It was the 4245 kronur so that worked out to $35 US. Whoa! I didn´t expect that much so I put the book back!

This morning the wind had a definite bite to it, but as the day progressed it became vansæll veðdur - miserable weather, truly nasty. By early afternoon the temperature was in the 30s with a driving rain and very strong winds. It was one of those days that you really want to curl up in front of a roaring fire with a cup of hot tea, and not move. But that was exactly when we had to get out to drive to Reykjavìk for the first of our workshop sessions.

The attendance today was very good, actually more than was there for worship yesterday. All 3 of Marias and Gyða´s daughters were there, plus their oldest grandaughter, as well as Paul and Darlene. Darlene is from the Philippines and speaks excellent English. She met Paul online and came to Iceland to marry him 2 years ago. She was a Christian when she arrived here and from what I understand was responsible for converting her husband. So the men and Darlene are easy to converse with in English, but Gyða and her daughters are not as fluent. We still manage to communicate though. The classes went well and took a full 2 hours. Jimmie spoke to the joint session about evangelism, then we broke into separate classes with William teaching the men and me the women today.

After class Gyða again provided us with a wonderful afternoon coffee or tea break while everyone chatted and got to know each other better. Suddenly, Marias came rushing into the kitchen where Katrece, Gyða and I were chatting to tell us we must hurry to the furniture store. They had told us that the Ikea store cafeteria was a good place to eat cheap so we had made plans to go there. We just barely made it. In fact, they locked the gate right behind the last of our party at 6:30 on the dot. Like I said, things close early here.

- Linda