Dia de Accion de Gracias

      As we celebrated Thanksgiving this past week, I was reminded that as the Spanish translation says, it should be more of the "Act of Thanks". What does that mean to me? It means many things but primarily it tells me to look back over the past period of time (day, week, month, year) and all the ways that I have given God Thanks for my life circumstances. Good and bad. Positive and negative. The prophet Job taught us to give Thanks to God in all of our situations. WOW! It is much easier to give thanks for the good things and then ask "why" for the difficult times. I have to wonder why that is that we often feel we should be exempt from any trials or hard times when the bible is very clear that the closer we get to God, the more trials we will experience. Maybe that is why we should be Thankful for those times, because it means we are getting closer to God as we get through them. It's still hard though.

Mogote: looking out of our front porch. It is the highest peak in the middle

(2010) Fred, Jeff, Lauren, Janae. Oh the memories of spitting wood

        On Thursday we were told to close our sites early and be at the SI base by 2:00 for games, followed by dinner at 4:00, then more games. Since most of us have left our families in the states, then this would give us the opportunity to spend time with our "DR family". It really was a great time with 90+ people in attendance. Several of the people from SI spent much of the day Wednesday and Thursday preparing for us. I had planned on a bicycle ride on Friday and then Janae and Marcy were going to climb Mogote but as the rain kept coming, our plans changed to just hanging around the house and reading. This is the second year in a row now that I have not been able to (or as my kids would say "didn't have to") cut and split wood on Thanksgiving weekend. I looked at that as a bonding time, They, of course had a different view of it :) . Either way you look at it, it didn't happen this year. I am sure we will make our own memories when we finally do get to climb Mogote with Marcy and Janae.

Sunrise coming up over the mountain that I see on my way to work on the days that is is clear.