Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving in the US....my family are going different directions to celebrate the holiday, but we are all together in heart - for this I am thankful!!

In a short while Sierra and I will be going with our church down to Michoacan to a very poor community. Remember all that laundry I did? Today we will see the fruition of our labor as we hand out clothes to the poor and introduce them to Jesus, have music and food, and generally join together with them in fellowship. I'm so excited! I'm really disappointed about not having my camera.

As I'm getting all the clothes together by the door to make it easier to load them on the trucks, I'm thinking about all the time and effort it took to do the washing, hanging out and folding and I'm glad I was able to do it. I think the Lord wants us to give good gifts, like He gives to us...and having the clothes clean and smelling nice is my way to make this gift good.

I'm reminded of how the kids pitched in to help, and they had so much fun racing up and down the stairs, trying to out-do each other on who could take the most clothes upstairs to hang them out to dry...laughing and egging each other on, begging me to give THEM the clothes so they could be the one to take them upstairs. What a blessing!

The other day I walked to the grocery store and after shopping, took a taxi home. As I drove up, Sierra came running up yelling "Mommy!!!!!" and all the other kids (about 6) came running up also...all of them asking "do you need help, Senora?" and they all grabbed a few bags out of the taxi and brought them inside, giggling all the way, with Sierra in the lead. What a blessing!!

This week, at the pre-school, I made those little handprint turkeys with the baby's hands for their parents....it's such an easy project and yet everyone was so impressed! The kids here don't get much in the way of art projects (read: nothing), so they had a good time and the teachers liked it too. Then, at the orphanage I had the kids do the same project...they were so great, and had so much fun just getting in there with color crayons and paper. The kids were ages 13-23 and most of them had not used crayons much and they all were having a blast coloring - what a blessing to take part in bringing them joy in such a simple way.

Yesterday, I showed them how Snow White signs her name at Disneyland and they all wanted me to write THEIR names like that...so we spent a lot of time doing that as they wanted me to do it over and over - all curly Q-ish and pretty.

I have so many blessings to be thankful for, and I'm glad that we have this holiday to remind us to focus on our blessings...things that make our life better and more fulfilling and bring us joy - things we should be remembering every day and living with an "attitude of gratitude"...that's how I want to live.

Happy Thanksgiving to All...and thank You Lord, for all of my many, many blessings!