Thanksgiving is Over, Christmas is upon us!

We hope you had a nice Thanksgiving with your families. We actually celebrated Thanksgiving two times. We decided to have a Thanksgiving lunch on Wednesday with the clinic staff. It was really special. Sometimes our classes are mainly foreigners and sometimes they are mainly Filipinos. This year there is one American in the bunch. As we came in to eat Allan explained the reason we celebrate Thanksgiving and that in our family we take time to pray for those things we are thankful for. We took some time to pray together and anyone who wanted to could give thanks to God. It was a really neat time as everyone prayed in English, Tagalog, and Ilongo(or Ilacano, I never can remember which one a couple of the girls speak). It was a beautiful glimpse of people from all nations gathering together before the throne of grace. I got a little choked up. It was not to be the last time I would get emotional over the holiday.
Thursday, we celebrated Thanksgiving again. All of the people we know had meals with their mission, so we just followed suit and had everyone in our mission that was here in Manila over. Since the Nelsen's have been in the states the last 2 weeks for their son's wedding it was a big crowd! It is not the first time it has been just the 4 of us. It was a nice day although very muggy so it didn't feel the least bit like Thanksgiving. The kids went to school, and Allan had fun with the students teaching suturing on pigs feet. I made a turkey, dressing, steamed broccoli, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, pickles, corn and pea salad, rolls, and in lieu of sweet potatoes---carrot souffle. People say that there are sweet potatoes here, but I never found them. Another missionary told me I would have been disappointed anyway. The carrot souffle was orange and the kids actually like it better. The big hit of the evening were the rolls and pickles. I do not think we have had rolls since we have been here and the kids couldn't get enough. We opted to skip rice for this meal and no one seemed to miss it. For dessert on Wednesday we had Pumpkin crunch since it fed more people than a pie, and then Thanksgiving Day we had pumpkin pie with whipped cream since there is no Cool Whip. It was a wonderful traditional feast! I did get a little emotional during the prayer time and supper, but I am sure that was to be expected. My family is all together at my brother's house and they called late that night after our kids were in bed. It was hard to be here alone and have them together on the other side of the world, but I did get to talk to them and that was nice.
This weekend we began decorating for Christmas and the kids are beyond thrilled. Time to get out the Christmas dishes!
The Nelsen's return late tonight and we will be glad. It is very quiet here in the evenings without them.

On another note, Will has a new toy in the yard. Allan designed and Pastor Buddy from the clinic built Will and Emily a swing-set. We had promised Will we would have a swing for him here. Buddy had finished the swingset on Thursday and they got to swing and play on it. They love it. It isn't quite finished. Allan is designing Emily a trapeeze bar for the other side. We brought the swing with us from the states