Thanksgiving

We invited two sets of Canadians over to celebrate Thanksgiving. We started 3 weeks early to prepare for the event, trying to procure the necessary ingredients. It took a long time to find a turkey—Thanksgiving is not a celebration in Northern Ireland, though most churches mark the harvest on a Fall Sunday of their choice. I finally found a Butterball Crown turkey, which means just the breast and wings. R was a little upset with me for carrying a big bag of potatoes and the 7-pound turkey all the way home from Lisburn. We were unsuccessful in finding canned pumpkin so I got a recipe from Parkside and made a pseudo-pumpkin pie out of carrots. If you want the recipe just email us. It tasted just like pumpkin pie. What about the cranberry sauce? Well, we looked at many shops but could not find any, but we went on line and found that there was some @ Tesco. So off we went for an hour and a half walk to hunt down the cranberry sauce. When we got there, we found pallets of the stuff! All the shops are gearing up for Christmas already, so cranberry sauce has suddenly arrived on the shelves. On Saturday night a couple and their 2 young daughters, a young Irish man from Belfast Bible College and a girl from Saskatchewan came for supper. As it turned out, she was born and lived about a half hour from Parkside. On the airplane we had met a young lady from B.C. who was coming to Northern Ireland for a year to do youth work. She came over and stayed the weekend. On Sunday morning, the church that we attend just 5 minutes from here just happened to celebrate Harvest Sunday, so the church was beautifully decorated and we were thrilled to be able to sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” We told the pastor how nice it was for them to plan their Harvest Sunday to coincide with Canadian Thanksgiving! That evening, four Queen’s University students R had met at the induction (orientation) for international students came over. We had a great time celebrating with our new Canadian friends. Surprising how bonding it is to celebrate away from home. We have plans to do a monthly meal with the Queen’s students. We really have a lot to be thankful for!