Frustrated, but thankful!

Well, I came to the office this morning all excited to post Thanksgiving pictures BUT for some reason my pictures from my camera won't download onto our computer. So, sorry. I tried! I will say Thanksgiving turned out to be a tremendous blessing. We had about 27 people total at our home for turkey, mashed pototoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, grits (yes, grits!), squash corn casserole, cranberry sauce, homemade applesauce, salad, pumpkin pie, pecan pie and even a few Thai dishes, pineapple and pomelo fruit. The Thais enjoyed the meal. They enjoyed the sweet potatoe casserole the most...so yippee for southerners who have shared their recipe with me! It was the first time I had ever made a turkey of this size (over 23 lbs!) and it turned out well too! The meal itself was a lot of fun. We shared why we celebrate Thanksgiving, the history of it for Americans and why we, Christians, celebrate. We told our Thai friends that in America people eat and eat and eat and eat and then they sleep, then they wake up and eat some more. They were amazed that a person could eat that much in one day! After eating we did a little karoake and then everyone started leaving because they had class or work to get to the next morning. We want to thank you for your prayers for us. We feel that God had exactly the people He wanted there. (We were not sure how many people would show). It was the perfect amount of people and everyone really seemed to enjoy themselves. Please continue to pray for those relationships to deepen and for God to work in hearts.
I also want to say that Paul and I didn't do it alone. It was a joint venture with Andrew and Becky Bronson, along with our Canadian intern, Tori, and most of our Thai staff. It was amazing how manageable the whole day was because we each had taken a part in preparing and cleaning up afterwards. It was wonderful...words can't explain all the service I saw emulated over Thanksgiving. So, thank you to each of you who helped in such tremendous ways and made being part of a team a joy and a blessing!
Please continue to pray for us as we enter the Christmas season. Pray for many, many oppurtunities to share Christ and the TRUE reason for Christmas...and I want to encourage you out there to reach out during this season...don't just be focused on your family but look outwards too and see if there are hurting hearts around you and really try to minister to them. Christmas is a perfect time of year to tell others of God's grace, love and mercy.
Well, I should be going. HOpefully I can figure out what is going on with my camera!