Cusi Danibaugh Din (happy thanksgiving Day!!!)
Happy Happy thanksgiving to all my favorite family and friends! 🙂 I frankly got to celebrate Thanksgiving already since my time is a day ahead of yours! What a thanksgiving!! It was defionatly one to remember.. I am so blessed by God!!!! I have so much to be thankful for!! MAHIMA MAHIMA MAHIMA!!!!! So let me give you the blow by blow… It started with going shopping at the market yesterday and going on the HUNT .. for the PIG.. the perfect pig.. you can’t get turkey here, so we just went shopping for a pig.. we finally found one at a meat market and had them chop the leg and the butt (that was the only part we wanted..) hehehe.. we had to get them to cut off the skin also! It defionatly doesn’t look like that in america.. i felt like little house on the prarie.
Then… last night I had my first ladies discipleship Bible study– to my suprise 6 ladies came and it was just incredible. They really opened up .. and it was a mixture of nepalee and english so it was great language practice. Please pray for this group. We will begin meeting every wednesday night!
Ok.. so then for the big thanksgiving day. My amazing friend Scarlet spent the night and we literally began cooking at 7:00 this morning.. the plan was for the guests to begin arriving around 2 and we graze on appetizers until 6:00.. nepalee time that means guests really come around 3:00 of 4 and you eat around 6:30 or 7! 🙂
So for appetizers we had homemade salsa and someone brought velveta from america (glory), cookies and other such things and a veg tray… Then we cooked for the main event.. the meal. (we cooked the pig last night.. i made my grandmommy’s famous maranade… i bet she is proud up in heaven!). I made sweet potatoe casserole and it was hilarous because you have to make things up .. like they don’t have evaporated milk so you have to make it up.. and the sweet potaotes are white– so i dyed them with food coloring– at first they looked red but they turned out sortof orangish redish! 🙂 So anyways– we had pig, deviled eggs, sweet potatoes, green bean casseroles.. casseroles galore ect. It was amazing. It’s much like america except you have to basically for real cook everything by scratch. So some of my american friends came at aroudn 3:00 and we played trivial pursuit in the kitchen as we were cooking– that was alot of fun.. and my kitchen in tiny!
Anyways– it ended up about 16 people came tonight– several nepalees, a bunch of americans, one philipino and one girl from uganda.. What a group! We wanted it to be an evangelistic event, so after eating we sat in a circle, nathan told the history behind thanskgiving and then we went around and shared why we were thankful. There were several non-christians here.. so it was a great way to share the gospel.. it really was a moving time. We shared and laughed and nathan shared about the number one reason to be thankful.. which is found in the message of John 3:16.. glory!
so now all that is left is a TON of leftoever, a mountain of dishes like I have never seen and my heart filled with thanksgiving. I cannot believe that God brought me here! I am reminded about the biggest thing that I have to be thankful for.. that even if my family is millions of miles away– I have a God whose son came millions of miles from heaven so that i could have a relationship not a religion.!
ok.. so i have rambled on. I am going to try to post some pictures! 🙂
oh yeah– i know this is the longest post ever.. but for my family.. remember the year when I made the turkey go swimming in the laundry room when i forgot to turn off the water in the sink.. well guess what! This year.. i forgot and turned the euroguard water filter on to fill up a water pitcher with water and ended up forgetting and we were all in the living room and about 30 minutes later the kitchen was flooded.. Jenn the wet bandit strikes again!
This was an amazing day!
I love the pics that is the Jenn I know and love! We are all so proud of you! I am so very thankful for you! You rock! I am excited God has answered my prayers for you. You are the Kings daughter, and he delights in you! You have made us all even more thankful this Thansgiving! I’ll be in touch! E-mail if you need anything! Hugs! I loved your post, there is never a dull moment when you are around! Love You!
Jenn: I was so excited to see your post! I knew that you would have a great adventure to tell about cooking TG dinner and as usual you didn’t let me down. HA! Meet the wet bandit Jennifer Hand! Ha! Do you know how God must have felt when he looked down and saw all the different races in a circle giving thanks and what a witness the Christians were to the non Christians. You know that’s how it will be heaven! All nations praising him! Jenn, you have planted so many seeds already and God will continue to bless you.
BTW your pig looked great! I want you to know that when I got married many many moons ago, that we had a pig at the rehearsal dinner and it had an apple in its mouth. I bet the flavor was wonderful and I know that your Grandmother was very proud of you in heaven. I’m sure you are resting from all of that cooking since its 3am there. I check the time in Nepal all the time at
http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_NP.aspx
In fact they also give me the weather there also, so I can keep up with you.
I guess you will now be busy writing the Christmas play for the church! I would love to be there to see it! Maybe you can send us some pictures or even a movie of it! Wow! That would be great.
We have finished our Thanks Giving traditional meal and we are all stuffed and can hardly move. It has turned so cold here this afternoon. Several stores are opening in the morning at 4am and I have not decided if I want to be one of those crazy people who adventure out yet or not.
I think your Mom is going to get me! She knows that it was told about not being able to find her car at Wal-Mart, so I’m in deep trouble. It was suppose to be our secret. I told TJ, and she told you! WELL, the word was out! Ha!
I am glad that you had a great TG and I’m praying for your Christmas Program. We love you, Momma Ellis
JEnn,
Well looks like I am one of those crazy people mamma ellis was talking about. Yup..I talked Aunt Laura and Mommy into jumping out of bed at 4:00 in the morning. AFter we went to bed at 1:00:)…WE headed out to JCPenny’s..All in the name of….Jenn…you bet. I was a dedicated sister. I wanted to get the best deals for my money so I could send a certain sis some awesome presents. And Penny’s at 4 did not dissapoint. I had a blast, and found and bought great stuff for you:)PTL….And saved $65 in the process..God is good, and so is the day after TDay:) ANd then I headed into work…Is that a proverbs 31 woman or what?
i Love you and missed you so much yesterday
Michelle
Jenn: I was also one of those crazy people at Penny’s at 4am this morning! I can’t believe that I didn’t run into Michelle. Poeple were crazy and I loved it! ha! I only got about 3 hours of sleep last night and it was soooooo cold this morning! The wind would cut you into! Is it cold there now? Sending you a big warm hug! Momma Ellis
Jenn,
I am so happy that you had a good Thanksgiving. I can’t think of a better way to spend the holiday than by sharing the good news of the gospel with those who don’t know the Lord. That’s much better than sitting around watching football while trying to digest a huge meal. I pray we’ll meet all of the people you shared your holiday with in Heaven.
If I haven’t told you lately, thank you so much for posting these blogs and for allowing us to take this journey with you. It not only comforts us to see and hear that you are doing well, but it encourages us in our walk with the Lord and it helps us know how to pray for your specific needs and requests.
By the way, Holly Evans is an intern at my office this semester. She overheard me talking about you on the phone the other day and asked me how I knew you. She said she used to go to church with you. She was really surprised to hear that you would be out of the country for so long. Wow, what a small world we live in. I’m going to show her your website the next time she is in the office.
I also wanted to update you on this weekend’s events. There was a huge crowd at Christmas on the River (even though it was very, very cold.) Every television station had cameras set up around the Nativity scene, and reporters were asking people why it was so important that this display be a part of the event.
In the past, the Nativity scene has virtually gone unnoticed. All of the focus has been on the boats, Santa’s stage show and the fireworks. But this year every station began there newscast with footage of the Nativity scene. God is so AWESOME! He turned this whole situation around and brought glory to His Son before, during and after the event.
The best part of the night was when Rich, who plays Santa and who loves the Lord, directed everyone’s attention to the Nativity scene and asked the audience to sing Silent Night with him. Hearing such a huge crowd singing that beautiful song in unison was so moving.
At Breakfast With Santa yesterday morning, Rich read the Nativity story to the over 300 children in attendance. No one complained, not even my co-workers. Praise God for His faithfulness and for the seeds that were planted this weekend.
And praise God for the seeds He is planting through your work in Nepal.
Love and prayers,
Sandra
Happy Thanksgiving, sweet friend! I love you and miss you so much!