It’s hard to believe tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  It’s supposed to reach an unseasonable 80 degrees today and truthfully, I wish it was a bit cooler, but this is Texas.  At 53 years of age, this year will be my first time to prepare a turkey.  The job usually falls to Tim, but he is in East Timor.  As my grandfather would have said, “You won’t learn any younger.”

A couple of months ago Tim was planning his trip to the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea and was ready to tell the travel agent, ‘book it’, when he got an email from his supervisor, “What are you doing the last half of November?  The workshop in Timor is going to happen and there are sufficient funds for you to come help. Can you do that?

As we pondered extending Tim’s three week tour to six, and Tim missing being here for Thanksgiving, we wondered what to do.  In the end, we decided the workshop and experience of working with his supervisor and her husband were worth the sacrifice and added the extra leg to his trip.

Shortly before Tim was to travel to East Timor, his supervisor contracted pneumonia and became seriously ill and was admitted to a hospital in Bangkok.  She wasn’t going anywhere soon and we wondered if Tim should cancel that part of the trip and head home.   We decided the opportunity to see what was happening in East Timor, meet the people involved in multilingual education and help out where he could made the trip still worthwhile.

So this Thanksgiving, while it would be nice to have Tim here, I am thankful for this opportunity for him to be a part of an important initiative in East Timor.  I’m also thankful for God’s healing hand on Tim’s supervisor who continues to surprise her doctor’s with her progress. Tim returns to Dallas on December 2nd which will be another day to give thanks.