Happy Thanksgiving from Peru!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you all enjoy the company of your family and loved ones. I hope you eat some delicious turkey and pumpkin pie. I hope that you take a moment to think about all of the blessings in your life and give thanks to God (or whatever thing or person you want to thank) for the amazing life that you have. And I hope that you can soak up a little bit of today's festivities for me. :)

This is officially my first Thanksgiving away from home. I have spent Thanksgiving in Virigina, but I was still with my brother, so it doesn't really count as "away". But now, I'm in Peru and have no family here and we will not be eating turkey or pumpkin pie. It's a little bit hard to be completely removed from the festivities of the day. I wish I could be there to hang out with everyone. Sometimes, my grandma brings these popper deals that have paper crowns to wear and some sort of whistle or "prize" of sorts. And of course, Thanksgiving is always good food. There will be plenty of Turkey Days to be celebrated in the future, but still feels weird to not be there now to watch the Macy's Day Parade with everyone and do the Thanksgiving Day things.

At the same time, I am still very thankful for the many blessings in my life. I can't believe I have been living in Peru for nearly 5 months. I have made some new friends and have built deeper relationships with those I already knew. I am very thankful for their love and generosity they have shared with us. Working with the church has been an incredible and interesting journey. We have seen the ups and downs with how things are going here. We are continually learning about how we can respond to God's vision for the congregations, people, and communities here. While still a struggle, I am certain I have to know a bit more Spanish than when I started, though it doesn't always feel like that.

And I am glad I can share these blessings with my new friend Melissa. It is crazy to think back to May/June when we first became Facebook friends and talked very briefly on Skype. We barely knew each other before arriving in Peru and committing to live together for a year. Talk about a bit of a leap of faith. In these months, not only have we been learning how to live in Peru, but also how to live and work with each. I think we have done pretty well so far. It is a great comfort to have someone to share with, both the good news and bad news. We also have fairly common interests, so we can bond over music, tv shows, food, and exercise, etc. We still have a ways to go on this journey together in Peru, and I am looking forward to seeing where it takes us. Thank you Melissa for being an awesome WSC partner!

To share Thanksgiving with our family here in Peru, we made hand turkeys at church and had everyone write and share what they are thankful for. It was a fun and simple activity. I especially liked that people named their turkeys - mostly after themselves, but it was cute.

We are thankful!

Fabrizio and Eynor are our resident turkeys.

So, while I am not home to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family and I miss them, I am thankful for many things and am happy to be in Peru! Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Carolina's birthday, so we still get to celebrate something! Last night, we decorated the kitchen a little bit with a sign that said "Feliz Cumpleanos" and we made a paper chain to hang over the kitchen door. I hope it was a pleasant surprise for her this morning. I didn't wake up at 5am to see her reaction, my apologies. We bought a gold garland and hung it up in the kitchen as well, but it wasn't up anymore this morning. It probably wasn't the best idea to hang over the stove, but we only had tape and that wasn't going to stick to the brick, so window over the stove it was. Hopefully, it didn't get taken down because it was burnt! Hahaha. Feliz Cumpleanos Carolina!