Live Love Faith Travel: Early Thanksgiving

Last Friday I was able to visit a village. Now getting there is not to hard in the car, but if you get car sick easily then you should take dramamine before you get into the car. I didn’t and was sitting in the truck telling myself “I’m not sick, I don’t need to stop and throw up. I can make it.” I did manage to keep everything down that I ate for breakfast.

After we arrived we had a cup of tea and then walked up a really steep hill to go to the church. Rice harvest is just beginning and so they were have a rice festival (or Thanksgiving service). It was a simple church, but was decorated with colored string, some silver garland, sugar cane, and then a bunch of pumpkins, banana’s and other fruits and vegetables were at the front.

There was singing, and then as people wanted they could go up front a present a special song or scripture reading that they prepared. After that, there was a message shared, offering taken and then everyone walked down to the bottom of the hill where they had a couple large tents set up with tables and chairs. It was a community feast, where everyone participated in preparing and serving the food. There was rice, noodles, a potato soup with meat, and grilled green beans. It was delicious!

Once everyone finished eating I walked around a little. There were kids around, but like Africa they hadn’t seen many foreigners and so they were very shy.

I had my camera with me and was able to get a couple pictures of some of the boys that were around. When I finally convinced them that it was ok and they could see themselves by looking at the pictures they warmed up very quickly and started to be silly. They were acting for the camera, and seemed to be loving it. By the end, they weren’t nearly as scared and would actually crowd around to see the digital photos.