Giving Thanks

We hope that everyone has had a happy and safe holiday. As for the Kreisa's we spent our second year helping out in various ways at the Thanksgiving dinner at our church.

We started the afternoon by making center pieces for the tables. Nicolas, Lea and I went over early and gathered leaves and pine cones and mixed them with flowers. Then the kids made welcome placards for each of the 35+ tables set up for the dinner.

Melissa helped organize the driving for about 40 refugees from around the area who were excited to join us at church for their very first Thanksgiving in America.

This community event has been going on for years and is very well organized. There are pre-dinner activities of games then a whole team who cooked ahead of time and then another who serves food and drinks during the meal. More than 300 people from all over town (and all walks of life) come to enjoy the homecooked meal. It is a mix of church families & neighbors, homeless and refugee families. For some it is thier only warm meal of the weekend. The dinner itself is traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, stuffing, mash potatoes, vegetables, cranberry sauce and gravy. Then a big dessert table which the kids were really excited about!

We shared our table with the patriarch of a large family who just arrived here 3 weeks ago from Bhutan. He was an educated engineer / surveyor in Bhutan for most of his early life. 17 years ago he was forced to leave his country and flee across the border to a refugee camp in Nepal because of the genocide that is happening to his people in the southern part of the country. He was a very gentle soul. He spoke english very well. Here is more on the situation in Bhutan http://www.geocities.com/ben_saul/BhutaneseRefugeesOverview1.html

After dinner, I drove another Bhutanese family home to San Jose and very much enjoyed hearing their stories of how they are adjusting to life here. Two already have good jobs at Fry's and were going to go into work at 4:00 the next morning to prepare for Black Friday (a very strange idea to them!!). They asked all about the traditions of Thanksgiving in America and Julia was able to answer better than I!

All in all it was a really great day. The kids had fun, we all had great food and we were really able to think about and share our may many blessings!