Thanksgiving

It was that time of year again where I was needing to leave the country in order to renew my visa. I had a friend who was driving to one of the Spanish enclaves (Spanish city in Africa) for some business reasons and it just happened to coincide with me needing to leave. It worked out well, since I have a cast, I didn't want to do alot of standing/walking, i.e. taxi to train, train to boat, boat to taxi, etc etc. This trip proved a bit fretful for me though. I did have some brder issues, but I made it back in without any trouble. I was quite worried for a bit, but He took care of it all-and I didn't have to spend Thanksgiving in Spain!
Thanksgiving was great actually. I spent it with 3 other families with lots of good food, including the traditional turkey, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, etc etc. It was all so wonderful, even had a tape of this past Superbowl to watch! It was an all day affair. It was so great to have families close by to celebrate together as well as, no traffic and no black friday craziness! PTL I'm not in retail this year!

Abraham Lincoln's

Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863

It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the

overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble

sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and

pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and

proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.

We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to

punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the

awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment

inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national

reformation as a whole people?

We have been the recipients of the choisest bounties of heaven; we have been

preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in

numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which

preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we

have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings

were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with

unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of

redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and

gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole

American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the

United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in

foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day

of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father Who dwelleth in the

heavens.

A. Lincoln, October 3, 1863.

That line about 'those sojourning in foreign lands' applies to me! Thanks Abe!