Thanksgiving comes to Prilep

Thanksgiving Thursday
We had a great Thanksgiving – we celebrated twice: on Thanksgiving Day with eight Macedonian guests and again on Saturday with our team. Our Macedonian guests only knew of Thanksgiving from movies, so we enjoyed introducing them to dressing, green bean casserole and sweet potato casserole. (I know the pic looks like we didn't feed them, but we forgot to take the pic until after we had cleared everything!!) They seemed to like it all but especially liked the sweet potato casserole – which, truth be known, I make with pumpkin since sweet potatoes aren't grown here. Anyway, they loved the faux sweet potato casserole but they all took a bite or two, then saved it for dessert with their coffee!! But they liked it enough to have seconds, thirds and maybe even fourths (we sat around talking a while!).

We also carried on our tradition of giving everyone a slip of paper with „I am thankful to God for ...“ and asking them to finish it. Then between the meal and dessert, we draw them from a basket, read them aloud and try to guess who wrote what. It's a lot of fun and they seemed to enjoy it too.

Thanksgiving Saturday
On Saturday our friends from the town of Ohrid: Brian & Mandy and Baby Kate Davis, and of course, Jeff & Amy Williams from here in Prilep came too. At the last minute, Lee Bradley and teammate Brandon (sorry, can't remember his last name) from Albania were passing through town and came to the celebration too!

Prilep's First Football Game
In the morning while the ladies shuffled around the kitchen making ourselves busy, the guys and kids went out to play football. Four Macedonians played: Borce (from English classes), Gabriel (from the Sunday Bible study) and another Borce (the landlord for our ministry center) and his 10-year old son Ivan. Borce and his wife and Ivan had been to our house for Thanksgiving dinner.


They played on a field where teams often practice soccer and Saturday morning they had quite an audience as you can see in the picture above. It was very muddy and there was lots of slipping and sliding, followed by lots of sore muscles!! It was great fun and a tradition that can't be left out!



Our Team Thanksgiving in Prilep

After football, the muddy guys returned to clean themselves up before the meal. Then the feast began – and went on and on and on! I must admit that there was at least one advantage to Kyle's many travels this past month: he was able to buy a Butterball turkey and bring it home! Macedonian turkeys are typically about 9 lbs. max; this one was a good 20 lbs!!!




The food was fantastic and the company was as close to family as we could possibly get, so it was a special time for all of us! Unfortunately, if we harp on the „family“ analogy, Kyle and I are the grandparents, so we'll just move on now!


Pin the Beak
After dinner we played „Pin the Beak on the Turkey“ which Rebekah had graciously designed for us. Brian from Ohrid won, but Josh and Mandy tied for an extremely close second place. And as you can see, Kate did pretty well too, but she didn't wear the blindfold!






Thanksgiving Sunday
Our Macedonian friends really enjoyed trying out football so Sunday night we invited them over to watch a REAL football game on TV (it was Giants vs. Redskins), giving us the chance to explain the rules better. By half-time, Borce (#1) began planning out how we can start an American football league here in Prilep! Though there is currently nothing that we know of here in Macedonia, there are two leagues in Serbia, and I'm reading John Grisham's book right now about football in Italy, so who knows?! Of course, though it'd take a lot of organizing, football would be fun -- but if it does happen, we're hoping it will be key to reaching a whole segment of men and their families for Christ. Pray that if this is part of God's plan for Prilep, we would know how to pursue it.

All in all it was a fabulous holiday weekend. It seems that we have made huge bounds in deepening some friendships with a few here in Prilep, and that is beginning to feel nice!