Thanksgiving is always a difficult day when we are on a mission because we are away from our family. But we do have the opportunity to share it with a group of wonderful missionaries.

When we were in South Africa and Indonesia we were  only away for one Thanksgiving but we will celebrate two Thanksgivings and two Christmases away from home. In South Africa we invited all the missionaries in the Richards Bay zone over for dinner. In Indonesia President Marchant and his wife invited all the couples in the Barat Zone to come to the mission home for dinner.

Today we were invited over by President and  sister Anderson to come to the mission home and share Thanksgiving with them and the other couples. The Andersons provided the main items of turkey, stuffing and delicious yams, while the couples brought other necessaries and the desserts.

It was a big success – I was very surprised to find that I enjoyed sister Anderson’s dressing as much as our traditional one. Sister Beagley made some wonderful cakes – pumpkin, pecan, banana cream and an amazing apple. All in all it was outstanding.

After dinner and introductions of the couples to the Beutlers and ourselves we played a game where the sisters clobbered the elders. Sister Steimle turned out to be a champion guesser of holiday song from just a few scribbles on the board. It was a lot of fun.

We took a group picture that I will post here as soon as the President sends it to us.

Back home we tried to contact our family so we could chat with them on Facetime but as I am writing this we have only contacted Bob’s family. Hopefully before the night is out we will get ahold of the others.