A Very Honduran Thanksgiving...

Any good blog about Thanksgiving is going to start off with things to be thankful for, so here we go... A warm place to sleep and plenty of food, a God who sees me and who has called me by name to be his, a family back home that is more loving and supporting than I could have hoped for even though they are far away, a brother who is always an encouragement to me, a sister that makes me laugh, a mom who understands me better than anyone, a dad who never lets me forget that I'm loved, grandparents who make me nothing less than very proud to be their granddaughter, an extended family that will take up the battle of prayer for me in hard times, an incredible house-mate that will pick up my slack, say the hard things, and not get too tired of me, an unbelievable pair of stand-in parents that will cry with me about being far from family, and the list goes on...

Anyone crying yet?  I'm almost there.

Let's start with Wednesday.  Emily and I go to the grocery to get the green beans to feed 35 people.  The guest list for the dinner included all the missionaries from school, the Brewsters, the girls in both the Misericordia project, and Buen Pastor project, the tias, a few friends, and our spanish tutor and husband.  Needless to say it was a LOT of green beans.  It was a little awkward as we went to the cashier and we were laughing feeling self-conscious while they just stared.  Lol.  We took the green beans to the Brewster's house and started cooking...

I was in charge of the green beans, while Emily started making pie crust for the individual pumpkin pies for everyone!  Yum...  Now, I had lost my voice and could only whisper which wasn't so fun.  I was feeling kinda  down because it was the day before Thanksgiving, I was away from family, and sick.  Boo.  But in all the little things God continues to show me he wants to be my provider and the two things that I had been wishing I had Momma Brewster pulls out of the closet:

Yes!  that is Mucinex and Lemon Mint Ricola drops!  It could not have been more perfect.  That night we wrapped up the pre-Thanksgiving cooking and headed home.

Thursday morning my voice was still very weak and that morning I'll admit I was having a bit of a pity-party.  I was in a foreign country away from family on Thanksgiving (which I've never been), having to go to work to teach classes, and on top of everything I didn't think I was going to have a voice to be able to talk to my family with!  Prayer, prayer, prayer and we headed to school.  Without a voice I asked for a sub for my fifth grade classes and tried to save my voice as much as possible with the others.  Thank the Lord that by the time I got to Skype the family I had enough of a voice to chat for two-ish hours.  I started crying when I saw all of my family on the other side of the screen and cried when they sang me Happy Birthday together and cried when I said good-bye, but it was all the kind of crying that's really good for the soul.

A few hours later we were sitting down to dinner with all the friends and family I've grown so close to since coming here.

And then we started serving the food, and in true Honduran fashion, here's what it looked like a few minutes later...

No, Hondurans are not romantics that like to eat their dinner by candle light, the electricity went out.  Ha!  Of course.  The good news was that we had finished all the cooking so it was doable to get the food served in the dark and then the electricity came back on just in time for us to start cleaning.  What a night.  But the food was delicious and the company spectacular.

Top Left: Me and Alexandra, Kadian, Mercedes and her baby girl, Fernanda
Top Right: Me and Emily Morris (the missionary from Nebraska)
Bottom Left:  Me and a few of the precious angels from Misericordia (Gloria, Yojana, and Vanessa)
Bottom Right: the missionaries with Luz, another Misericordia girl


And my favorite photo of the night just for kicks and giggles was Vanessa on Mario's motorcycle:

 She doesn't look happy, but I think that's her "ya, that's right, I'm on a motorcycle" face.  Lol.