Over this past year, when making my decision to join the world race and leave my family for a gap year, I absolutely dreaded the idea of missing thanksgiving. My family has always made this day an amazing event from all sides. It’s a day where we show our appreciation for one another by spending time together, eating lots of good food, and watching the best team in the entire world the Dallas Cowboys. With that being said, I was not looking forward to this week.
My team & I got the chance to spend the week leading up to thanksgiving working & tenting on a farm. We prepared fields, harvested crops, weeded/pruned, all in a 100 degree African sun. It was a great change of scenery, and we got to build relationships with a young married missionary couple from the US that ran the farm and were kind enough to host us. I went into thanksgiving there at the farm with little expectations but I was absolutely blown away.
We cooked & prepared everything that afternoon, then all dressed up nice after a week of being covered in dirt and maneuver. For dinner we all gathered around the multiple uneven tables we put together which were surrounded by tree stumps & improvised benches, the girls made it all look aesthetic with flowers & their creativity. Before we began to eat the food, we each stood up one by one and told everyone what we were thankful for. When it finally got to me, I described how thankful I was for the Lord blessing me with the opportunity to live amongst such a wonderful community even if it meant sacrificing my family time I was used to. After saying grace, we ate… and we ate A LOT. All of us got so full, and could not contain ourselves with laughter. The atmosphere was just incredibly happy. I gazed around the table to faces filled with so much joy. Although we had all left our families & traditions, the Lord allowed us to have each other which meant laughing to the point it physically hurt. This dinner is one of the most wonderful memories I have of the race thus far.
After dinner, the blessings continued. Our ministry host gave us guys the opportunity to watch all the football games! All of us guys drank coffee, ate snacks, played cards, and just enjoyed the fact that we could watch some thanksgiving football. To make it even better I got to witness the Cowboys have a spectaculars win! We might have had to stay up till 3am to watch the games because of the time difference but it was completely worth it.
I can only be grateful for how much of an amazing week the Lord allowed me to have. He knew this was a week I was not looking forward to, therefore, He went and made it one of the most enjoyable I could ever ask for!
