This is the time of the Thankful blogs. I have been sitting here, trying to decide how to convey my gratitude adequately through my writing. I have so many things to be thankful for this year, where could I possibly begin? It is important to me to write my blogs in a way that is captivating and worth reading because I write the things that have captivated me and that I think are worth being read.
I have been contemplating how to format this. Should I make a list? Make a picture blog? Explain my gratitude in detail? And when I start writing, how could I possibly limit the things I am thankful for to fit in a blog? Finally, just moments ago, I found my solution. This is how I discovered it:
My team and I have been saving up our money all month so that we could prepare a thanksgiving feast. We incorporated traditions from each teammate's family, mine was substituting fajitas for the Turkey. Needless to say, we had an excess of food and even with our three Thanksgiving guests, we had leftovers.
There is a family (mother, father, four children) who live at the house with us. The father is the security guard for the grounds and the mother helps cook for ministry. When we are not at ministry and the children are not at school we have been able to form precious friendships with the 4 kids. My closest new friend, Didier, is five and beautiful. It took all of one day for us to become best buds.
The day after Thanksgiving I shared some of our leftovers with the kids, thinking that they would appreciate the gift since they benefit from our ministry – feeding the hungry kids of the area. They promptly accepted the gift and snacked on our excess food.
As I went outside, where their home is, to wash the dishes, Didier came with me, chattering in his baby Spanish. As per usual, I had no idea what he was saying. It wasn't until he went to his mother and then came back to me that I realized he was offering me his corn, what his family had for dinner.
This five year old, who has much more than many of his neighbors but still significantly less than the majority of Americans, was trying to share his dinner with me. I had shared with him out of excess, and he was sharing with me out of generosity.
So, today I am thankful. I'm thankful that a five year old reminded me what generosity is. I'm thankful that I never had to experience compromise between food or generosity as a child. I'm thankful that I get to now. I'm thankful for this experience, and that I get to learn lessons like these daily. I'm thankful that I have 8 more months on this journey, and then a lifetime of journeys after that.
