Day of Thanks

Yet again I am celebrating another American Holiday while living abroad. Before you start feeling sorry for me, let me inform you that my Ugandan American Thanksgiving was quite wonderful! The expats on campus got together to celebrate in the evening (after a normal Ugandan workday) with most of us contributing either food or money for the feast. My contributions were stuffing (60 servings worth) and dessert (3 pans of pumpkin gooey cake). Since stuffing and dessert happen to be two of my favorite parts of the Thanksgiving meal, I was pretty excited to make them. I have to say, I kind of rocked the stuffing  J, we even found some celery to put in it (a surprisingly hard vegetable to find in Uganda). 

The dessert tasted fine, but for one reason or another each pan looked completely different from the others (see below). But, Uganda makes you flexible, so I just had to laugh it off and remember that my dessert was among a table full of others. 

Besides the food, the Thanksgiving meal brought together good company. It is always interesting to hear what everyone is doing in Uganda and what brought them here in the first place. Plus, it’s wonderful to be surrounded by a community of believers. The celebration also made me really thankful for my time in Uganda. I am amazed at all God has done in me and through me during my stay. Especially encouraging was seeing my students do so well during their practical physical assessment performance exams this past week. I could see that they had been practicing hard and that they really had been listening all semester long (which I was not always confident in)! Teaching these eager students has be a humbling job these past two semester. I find it difficult to believe that in two weeks this experience will all be over and I worry that when I get home it will feel like this reality was only a dream. Whatever time brings, though, I will always be thankful for the reality of living out a God-given dream: to teach and impact the lives of Ugandan nursing students.

                             Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving from Uganda!