Finding Home Away From Home This Thanksgiving

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving week filled with food, family, and fun! The holiday looked a little different for us this year as we’re away from home, but we were grateful for the chance to host the missionaries for Thanksgiving dinner. Cooking for others made it feel much more like the Thanksgiving we are used to.

Here in Palau, they celebrate Thanksgiving much the same as we do in the States—and I especially love that the Friday after Thanksgiving is also a holiday: Family Day. We were surprised (and relieved!) to find all of our traditional Thanksgiving staples: turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, and rolls. The missionaries were so appreciative, and we hope it made their holiday away from home a bit easier.



After dinner, we wanted to express our gratitude through service. While cleaning out some storage closets at the church, we discovered extra artwork of the Savior and a podium. We immediately thought of the small chapel at the hospital that we had toured a few weeks ago. So on Thanksgiving Day, we delivered the podium, hung the artwork, and cleaned and organized the chapel. It felt wonderful to serve others on a day when we’ve been given so much.






I think I’ve made more bread on our mission than I have in the last five years combined! There are a few reasons for that. When we lived in Mongolia, we couldn’t find a store-bought bread we really loved—but we could find all the ingredients to make our own. Homemade bread was one of the first things I baked there, and it instantly made our apartment feel like home. We also love sharing a little piece of home with the people we meet. This week was bread-making week again, and we brought a loaf to our new neighbor as we introduced ourselves. He’s from Japan and works for the embassy here. J.D. enjoyed making a fun connection with him, having served in Japan more than 40 years ago as a young missionary.


Thanks to an idea shared by another senior missionary, I started a kind of “Flat Stanley” project using a picture of our grandkids. I take them on little adventures with us, snapping photos along the way. This week they went to the post office, helped with our service project at the chapel, and even joined us for Thanksgiving dinner. Staying connected across the miles can be challenging, so I’m always experimenting with new ways to bridge the distance!




We tried a new restaurant this week—The Rose Garden—and the food was delicious. The view was absolutely spectacular. Honestly, the scenery here never gets old!


Today we visited some members and friends on the North Island, about an hour’s drive from where we live. We finally met the famous Toby, a woodcarver we’ve heard so much about. Click Here if you want to read about him.  We’re already looking forward to going back another day to spend more time with him.


And the final bit of exciting news for the week....we have internet at our apartment!!   This wasn't because the island got splitters, but because a kind member of the branch found an extra one in their apartment!  Those green lights have never looked so good! Until next week, when we will be reporting from Guam!  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mongolia Week 2--Snow, Naan, and ChatGPT Saves the Day

Image
It's hard to believe week two in Mongolia has already come and gone!  Honestly, we were just marveling at the fact that just three weeks ago we were still in Utah, frantically checking our passports and wondering if someone would be there to pick us up at the airport in Tokyo!  That feels like an entire past life now--yet somehow, the days here are flying by faster than a Mongolian wind gust in May!  We're settling in quite nicely and even starting to feel at home.  Our biggest discovery this week? ChatGPT at the grocery store!  Forget Google Translate--ChatGPT is now our personal shopper, translator, rice cooker manual, and amateur artist (see the below caricature we requested haha)!  Thanks to its guidance, we now know which mystical button to press on the Korean rice cooker without launching it into space!   Our grocery adventures are feeling a lot less like "Iron Chef: Mystery Ingredient Edition" and a lot more like real success.  The naa...
Read more

A Tender Pause on the Journey

Image
  This week’s blog looks a little different. Instead of writing from Mongolia, we’re writing from Arizona—where we unexpectedly returned to celebrate the life of our beloved father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and husband, Dean. His passing brought a swirl of emotions, tender memories, and sacred moments that we will carry with us forever. When we first got the call, we wrestled with the decision to come home. The cost was high. The travel was long. But something kept tugging at us—and now, having been there, we can say with certainty: we are so glad we came. The time we shared with family—hugging, remembering, crying, laughing—was a gift. A healing breath. A reminder that our families are eternal and will be together forever.  We all agreed Grandpa had impeccable timing. We were home for Keesa’s birthday, for the 4th of July, and for the first family gathering in the Flake’s new home—a place that somehow already felt like the heart of the family. Keesa and Louis graciousl...
Read more

Eighteen Months and a Thousand Goodbyes

Image
The day has finally arrived!  After spending the weekend with Devin and Sarah, we enter the Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT in the morning.  We will spend a week there before flying to Tokyo for more training for a week and then on to Mongolia!  We don't have official travel plans yet as we are still waiting for our Visas, but the people in the know feel they should arrive this week and we should be ready to roll!  Goodbyes are hard!  We are so grateful for modern technology and the ability this will give us to Facetime, talk, and text with our family and friends. We are so grateful for our kids and parents that are going the extra mile to allow us to serve.   Although all goodbyes were hard, the hardest was saying goodbye to our grandkids.  "But Grandma, how will we have Grandma days if you are so far away?"---5 year-old Kara.   "Grandma you look out the window when you go on the big plane and I will be waving at you.  Gran...
Read more