Thanksgiving in Tanzania!!

We celebrated our very first Thanksgiving overseas this Thursday!  The other couple on our team and we decided to celebrate the holiday by preparing a Thanksgiving meal as a way to thank our Tanzanian workers for their very hard work this year!  We began preparations on Wednesday as Megan and I attempted to create green bean casserole from scratch....and I do mean every ingredient from scratch....right down to snapping the green beans, making cream of mushroom soup from scratch and trying to hold a candle to French's fried onions......and it was a success!!!

On Thursday we rose early to put our two chickens in roasting bags (not a turkey to be found in Tanzania!) and then Megan started mass producing chopped potatoes.....we soon had three pots boiling on the stove top and thanks to our electric beater, we were able to make mashed potatoes just like our mom's :)

While Megan was chopping, I was taking a stab at rolls....from scratch....for the very first time....at a very high altitude - they didn't rise quite as much as expected, but there were only two leftover, so I think it was okay!  Then, I started in on gravy (not from scratch thanks to some great mixing packets the previous missionaries had left behind).  After about 5 hours in the kitchen that morning, we hurried up to the dining room to serve our 24 Tanzanian workers!

food is ready to serve

Megan and Mike getting things setup in the kitchen

The workers filed in, we prayed together, and then we served them a plate filled with American Thanksgiving treats - we had chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and rolls!!  It was so neat to see what kinds of foods they enjoyed and what they thought was a little weird - the stuffing threw a few of them off, but all were so kind and said they loved it!  After serving our workers, we dug in too and man did it hit the spot!!

some even decided to get seconds!

After eating, Megan and I rushed to the bathroom to change for our SKIT we prepared to tell the Tanzanians about Thanksgiving because many had no idea why we celebrated this holiday.  We talked about the pilgrims coming over and the Native Americans helping them get through the winter, which was celebrated the following spring with a meal to offer thanks!

Pilgrim & Native American

We wanted to show our workers the same thanks for helping us adjust to life here, continually making conversation with us in Swahili to help us practice, and for keeping this training center up and running, covering our ministry in prayer and being GREAT to work with!!  We thank God for them and loved sharing our culture and holiday with them!

Hope you had a very Happy Thanksgiving!!