Thursday, November 24, 2005

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

To all our loved ones - all our family and friends back home...and those of you we may not know that read our blog. HAPPY THANKSGIVING! We hope you have a very special day.

If you're worried about us missing out, don't worry - looks like we'll have at least two Thanksgiving dinners here in Costa Rica. I'm making pies tonight. The pumpkin smells and looks awesome but the pecan pie...how do you say "flop" in Spanish?!?! Oh well. Since I still have a hankering for a pecan pie I'll try a different recipe tomorrow. I'm struggling to get used to our oven here, plus a different altitude and ingredients that are just different enough to completely destroy my time-tried favorite recipes! (Not to mention the fact that I packed all my cookbooks and recipes in our shipment for Ecuador...which is sitting in a hangar in Colorado waiting to be shipped.)

We have school in the morning and then are heading over to some friends house to watch American football (YIPEE!) and eat and eat some more. I was surprised tonight (and so was Sean!) when I completely fell apart thinking about not being with family or enjoying the usual traditions - I don't like being so far away sometimes. It doesn't help that we've hit the 6 month mark (when it is normal to have another bout with culture shock) during the holiday season!

I keep coming back to something a fellow student spoke about in chapel on Tuesday. GOD'S GRACE IS SUFFICIENT. Wow. Here we are so far from family, far from what we know, far from good old-fashioned traditions that were a part of who we were. We don't have a car (which is really starting to get annoying!), our bed is killing our backs, our couch could seriously injure you if you sat in the wrong spot. We're struggling to learn a language, being corrected over and over again, we're still learning how many ways we've offended people with the Spanish we do have, we don't understand our church services.... BUT GOD'S GRACE IS SUFFICIENT. The wonderful thing about where we are in life - in a new country, learning a language, "camping out" for a year - is that it drives us that much closer to God. And we have discovered that in every trial, every situtation GOD'S GRACE IS SUFFICIENT. What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving season? God's grace.

That and the fact that Brooklyn is now potty trained. YES!

1 comment:

Nate said...

I just wanted to say "Hang in there!" I grew up on the mission field and my wife and I are preparing to go back outselves so I know what you are going through. We are praying for you!