Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. And once again this year, we have so much for which to be thankful. We serve an awesome God. We have amazing kids, great families and friends, and wonderful co-workers. God provided a spectacular partnership team to help us come here to Tanzania, and He has been with us every step of the way as we have been adjusting to life here and learning Kiswahili.

I'm also thankful that language school is nearly complete. Today, we finished our final day of classroom learning! The next step is leaving tomorrow morning for a 7-day home stay with a Tanzanian family in Iringa town. After our home stay, we'll return to the campsite for a home-stay debriefing, oral and written Kiswahili assessments, and graduation. We'd deeply appreciate your prayers as we finish up and prepare to move to our new home in Dodoma.

Before I end for today, however, I'll leave you with a few pictures from our first Thanksgiving here in Tanzania. Paul, our friend Ellen, and I cooked a traditional American Thanksgiving lunch for the four other families here at the campsite. All four families are European and had never experienced Thanksgiving before. We were definitely conducting some "food experiments," considering the fact that we were cooking on/in a charcoal stove. But thankfully, everything except my yeast rolls (which didn't rise - I'll blame it on the high altitude) was a success and received rave reviews (if I can say so myself).

Sweet potatoes and carrots boiling on the stove:Making cornbread for stuffing and apple cobbler:
Ellen putting the finishing touches on the sweet potato casserole:Taking the stuffing out of the oven:
Finished products ready to serve:
Our friend, Les, carving one of the 4 chickens we roasted:Our family at dinner:

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!