Thanksgiving and home

It’s my least favorite time of the year, which should, in fact, be my most favorite time of the year: Thanksgiving!  It’s my favorite time of the year, when I do my best to tell everyone in my world here in Belgium about what is happening in my other world back “home” in America.    But it’s my least favorite time of the year, since we live in a land that doesn’t celebrate American Thanksgiving, so when all our family and friends are talking turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie, we are just going on about our normal routine on the last Thursday of the month of November.

Ah, the rich tradition of giving thanks.  It’s that national holiday that brings up so many fun memories of Thanksgiving celebrated, at least for me, literally around the world.  Childhood memories of extended family gatherings of 30+ people as my Mom stressed about how to make lump free gravy for a bunch of relatives who, in later years, started to bring their own canned gravy when that became available in the supermarket:  of Mom and Dad getting up early Thanksgiving morning to stuff “Tom” (affectionate name for the turkey); of Turkey bowl touch football games played in Cal Park on Chicago’s Southside with friends from the local Covenant and Evangelical Free churches.  Then, memories of celebrating Thanksgiving in Belgium (1987), then Congo and CAR and Cameroon, and my favorite Africa Thanksgiving memory:  buying enough chicken at the local market to kill later when they were a bit plumper and painting the toenails of the chickens so that we could easily identify our chickens, without any question or doubts, from the other chickens running around in the village (okay, does a chicken have toenails or is it clawnails….)

Yet no matter where you celebrate the actual day of Thanksgiving, I’ve learned over the years that it’s better to celebrate thanksgiving every day of our lives.  Practicing an attitude of gratitude will be a life long challenge, but I love what it does to my spirit.  It allows me to look beyond the situation at hand and say “thank you, God, for your goodness, for your hand of provision, for your protection, for the gift of life….” And my list goes on!

 

On a regular pursuit of making Belgium "home"

Home is with my true love Steve ~

Home is also hanging out with my sisters ~

Home is hanging out with my new family ~

And also hanging out with new friends ~

And hanging out with forever life friends ~

Each week, as I hang out with a group of women who have fled home for so many different reasons, I am mindful of our need to create a space that we call “home”.  Here is an example of a craft project that we had recently done together.

 

Here’s a great quote to go along with that craft project:

“There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there.  The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place.” (G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man). 

One of my joys in visiting my newfound friends in their new homes is seeing how they decorate their “home”.   Some of the decorations are familiar ones to them, from their homeland, colors and language scripts that I struggle to recognize.  Some of the decorations are things that they have been able to find locally here in Europe.   And you can imagine the joy I felt in my heart as I walked into a friend’s home this past weekend, to be greeted by her “home” banner that we had made together.  Her joy in her “home”, her place to care for her family and her place to welcome her new family, the one that God has provided when she’s so far away from her biological family. 

Going back to the quote for a moment, in the context of this Thanksgiving celebration, I love the central idea of this quote: that home is the place that you stay put in, but also the place where you can travel around the world to find “home” and eventually you just get back to the same place where you started.  I find myself being so thankful for a place to call home, a place with tons of home memories that is just bursting with the possibility of making new home memories.

Thankful. For. Home.

That’s all ~

What a day!

One of the most popular questions that anyone ever asks me during these years of cross cultural ministry service is “what is it that you do as a missionary?”  Now, I have to admit that this question was always easier to answer when I was working as a missionary nurse in Congo (ex-Zaire) and the Central African Republic (CAR).  “I teach courses on pediatrics in our nursing school”.  I help train the African nursing students in the hospital wards.  I help run the nutrition center with my African colleague.  I drive the truck when our community health team goes out to local villages and does health and nutrition assessments of kids ages 0-5 years old.  I help preserve the cold chain for the vaccines for our village health clinics.  I teach classes on hygiene and nutrition, and always about Jesus, in local villages among nomadic cattle herders.

But the question became somewhat more difficult to answer in the past 10 years since I’ve been living in Belgium.  I am the wife of the pastor of a local international Protestant congregation.  I help run a women’s club for refugees.  I design craft projects for women who are trying to build a new home in a country that is very different from their homeland.  I work with our youth band at church. 

So, maybe it would be interesting to hear what a Saturday looked like just recently in my world…..

It started with just breakfast and a grocery store run this morning.  Every other week, our Saturdays begin with a group of guys hanging out at our dining room table for breakfast, Bible study and prayer.  But today it was just Steve and I at the breakfast table.  Off to the grocery store by 8.10am before it gets crazy busy with everyone who has to work during the week who have to now buy groceries for a 4 day weekend, since November 11 is a holiday (Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, Veteran’s Day, depending on what part of the world you are from), which means that November 10 (Monday) becomes a bridge day and many shops and businesses will be closed.  Groceries are unpacked by 9.15am, and it’s time for my first piano student.  She’s a beginner piano student, but already knows a lot about music.  Today we’re working on timing and practicing “I want to walk as a child of the light”, a familiar song in both her Catholic and my Protestant traditions.  When she’s done, in walks my younger student who is preparing for her first piano recital which is scheduled for Monday, November 10 (bridge day, so it’s a school holiday for the kids and the evening before a day off for the parents ~ nice!)  Putting the finishing touches on her practice schedule, making sure we have all the names of the songs she’ll be playing and her full official name which will appear on the program, complete with her choice of which favorite color paper to print the programs on (pink was the color of choice….can you tell I’m working with a girl?!)

  

Put piano things away, time to clean the house because the group of 10-12 young followers of Jesus who are being discipled in their mother language (hint:  it isn’t English or Dutch!) are coming after church tomorrow!  We just have to provide space and internet access so that they can sing their praise songs and worship in their mother language.  Though we won’t be participating in their meetings, other than welcoming them into our home, I am so excited about welcoming these new friends into our space.  May they find it a place of welcome ~ and a clean bathroom!

While I’m cleaning house in preparation for tomorrow, there are other preparations going on in the office.  Steve is meeting with the AIPC intern, while Felix is running the bulletin and announcements for tomorrow’s worship.  There is music to get ready for the worship team, and children’s church lessons and photocopies to make. Add to that the sign up lists and gift bags have to be coordinated as the church enters into that magical time of the year when we prepare gift bags for “Sinterklaas”, that all important holiday that is celebrated here in Belgium on 6 December, when kids receive gifts for being good boys and girls (no gifts are given on Christmas Day, since all is taken care of by Sinterklaas in early December).  It’s beginning to look a lot like Sinterklaas is what we sing in our world here!

Next week is the first Christmas market of the season, and it's time to check in with my artist in residence (a friend who has been trained as an artist in her homeland and we are trying to support her artwork here).  A short phone call confirms that she's having a great week, has got a lot of her glass work already painted and ready to go for next week's market.  We talked prices and where we will meet together so that I can help her get to the venue where the market happens.  And she checks up on the progress of our other "project" that we're working on:  a typing project.  She had translated her bachelor of arts degree from her homeland into English, and needed help with typing it into a format acceptable to present for translation into the Dutch language so that it can be recognized here in Belgium.  She doesn't have time to try to type in English, as she is taking full time Dutch classes and preparing for mid term exams. Since I know how exhausting it is to type an important document in a foreign language (trust me, typing in French always challenges me and my ability to remember which accents and special squiggly lines are located where on my French keyboard which is really my English keyboard!), I've offered to type up her translation.  English is, after all, not only my mother/first language but also, at the moment, it happens to be my favorite language!  Typing is completed this afternoon, and a quick hit of the "send" button as an attached file makes for one happy camper in my friend's home in a neighboring town.

At the end of the day, we often crawl into bed exhausted but thankful for God’s abundant grace and provision throughout the day.   And then it will begin all over again tomorrow….

And that’s what I do!  I hope that I have been faithful to God's call on my life to serve my brother and sister, to love all with the love of Christ, and to acknowledge His abundant care and provision in our life and ministries.  What do you do?

 

All of this happening in this amazing place called Antwerp, Belgium ~ life is good!