Hello to my wonderful people!
Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all had an amazing time with friends and family and cold weather and all the holiday comfort foods! Currently, I’m not really craving anything traditional, except for maybe pie. Like any kind of pie with a gluten free crust. Apple pie would be amazing. My aunt gave me her recipe and for it you slice the apples super thinly and it has a brown sugar and cinnamon crumble topping. I wouldn’t say no to that. Honestly, though, I love the food here. Rice, beans, veggies, some meat – it’s great.
I thought that you guys might want to hear a bit about my Thanksgiving here in Honduras. So that is the purpose of this blog (insert smile here).
We started the morning by walking to a nearby river to look for rocks. Our ministry hosts here in Valle (pronounced vah-yay) read a book that talked about getting a rock and putting it under your pillow. Every time you go to bed and feel it, you remember to be grateful. So we went to the river to do that. Honestly, the biggest take away for me was just being able to go along the river bed jumping from rock to rock. God showed me so many gorgeous ones in a riot of reds, yellows, oranges, and even blue and green.
After this excursion, about half of our squad went to a neighboring town while the other half stayed back. I stayed and went to a coffee shop with some friends where I was able to call my family. We went back to the house for lunch, packed up for the Awakening (explanation below), and went back to the coffee shop (i.e. our source of wifi) where I was able to talk to more family at their Thanksgiving lunch and catch up with some friends. By this time, we needed to head to the hotel where the Awakening was being held.
Last night, we had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner of chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes. It was so good. It was also very special since they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Honduras (American holiday- pilgrims, remember?). Basically, our hosts are amazing.
Anyway, that was my Thanksgiving. Pretty chill, complete with family, friends, worship, and Thanksgiving. There is one thing that our squad was challenged with yesterday that I want to leave you all with.
“What are you not thankful for?”
We rattle off a list of things we’re thankful for – family, job, good food, whatever – but what are we not thankful for and why aren’t we thankful for those things? It can take a minute to think of examples, but once you do, it’s a little like “woahhh, that isn’t good.” The challenge is to ask God to change how you think about those things and instead create in you a heart of gratitude.
