I have so much to be thankful for! Thanksgiving is a great time to celebrate those blessings! I am thankful that I can live in Laos for the next years. I am thankful for my wonderful teammates and friends in Laos; for all the fun we have together. I am very thankful for my students and the Lao teachers who are in our department and who we can eat lunch with. I am thankful for the beautiful weather in Laos. I am thankful that I can eat American food in Laos (especially turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy and stuffing!) I am very thankful for my family and friends back home. But also thankful that I'm not too homesick. I'm thankful for my nephew and my other niece or nephew on the way! :) I am thankful that I know about Jesus' love for me. And I hope soon my students will know about his love too.
On Wednesday, we celebrated Thanksgiving with our team. We spent a good part of the day cooking and preparing food.
Linda came over in the morning to prepare the turkey. We bought the turkey from Thailand last week. I was not going to touch the uncooked bird, but it tasted delicious!
Kenton is carving the turkey and I'm making some buttery stuff for the biscuits.
We also invited Heather's roommate and a guy who works in the Faculty of Letters. We had all the normal Thanksgiving dishes: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, corn casserole, sweet potatoes and biscuits.
Kenton made pumpkin and pecan pie!
After dinner, we sang some songs and wrote things on paper stones (like what we do at Galena) that we were thankful for or that showed His faithfulness. Even though I wasn't celebrating with family, it is so nice to have a little family in Laos!
So true that friends become family when you are far away from your biological family! I am so thankful, too, for friends we have like that in so many places. I'm convinced that the blessing of those "friend families" are never meant to be "instead of" our original families, but "in addition to". Love,
ReplyDeleteAunt Mary