Thanksgiving!

This past week was Thanksgiving! The time of year where we eat too much with our family and friends and then we sit down and watch football. At least that is what Thanksgiving looks like for me each year.

I usually end up staying in California for Thanksgiving because it is just too expensive for me to fly back to Wisconsin for the 3 day break and then fly back again 2 weeks later for the month long Christmas break. But the best part about that is that each year I am welcomed into another family’s home and get to experience real, genuine hospitality.

This year I joined the Hamilton family. Dr. Ann Hamilton is a part of the administration of Vanguard and has been an incredible blessing in my life. Micah, her son, happens to be my brother floor RA so we work together all the time. Dr. Hamilton also invited 4 international exchange students to join us for the day and experience the American holiday first hand.

We all had such a great day. We all did our part helping out in the kitchen, we got to watch the Packers win and continue on undefeated (GO WISCONSIN!), we all ate way too much mashed potatoes and dinner rolls (and still somehow saved room for cheesecake and pumpkin pie), we all gave a toast and said what we were thankful for, we sat around in fellowship and got to really know those that we may have not known before, and ended the night by gathering around a piano to sing Christmas songs!

At the end of the day I realized how thankful I am that God has put me in such a great place and that I am so blessed to be surrounded by such incredible people. Even though I was not at my actual house back in the Midwest, I definitely felt very much at home this Thanksgiving.

I leave you with this: Colossians 3:15-17 (The Message)

“Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.”