Friday night I, Carrie, gave a lecture to a couple of hundred students on the history of Thanksgiving. I decided to give it in narrative form as I transformed myself into the character Sarah Brown. I pieced together a Pilgrim's outfit and headed off to my lecture. I got to tell of the pains and victories of blindly boarding a boat in hopes of a new life. It was really fun getting to tell the history of this great holiday. So much of it revolved around giving thanks to the Provider of all good things. I was able to explain how the Pilgrim's had a day set apart to give thanks to our Father and spend concentrated time with Him.
After giving the history part, Sarah went and got her friend Carrie who told of some of the modern day traditions. And afterwards I took some questions. The funniest one was "Do the animal protection people get upset because Americans are eating the turkeys?" He must have read that somewhere b/c certainly people here are not concerned with animal rights!
I left them with a challenge to thank somebody for being a good friend or parent or whomever. A lot of them have parents who have sacrificed ALOT to send them to college. Most of these students are from small farming towns and their parents give up their lives so that their kids can have a "better" life. It was an honor to get to share this holiday with them. And it's even more exciting to get to share the next holiday coming up!