Thanksgiving Day in Xela (that's the shortened version of Quetzaltenango, in case you didn't catch that before)

Since Monday is the only day of the week that all of us temple missionaries can get together, we had our Thanksgiving day feast yesterday.  And since we will all be working in the Temple on our real Thanksgiving Day, it just seemed real to us yesterday.  The temple president's wife, Hermana Galvaz, asked us north Americans to plan and bring our traditional dishes and they would fill in with some of theirs.   So I started a group e-mail and we got it all organized.  We really weren't missing anything.

This is dad whipping up the mashed potatoes which was part of our contribution.  I also made stuffing with cornbread which turned out a little strange because the only cornmeal we could find was corn masa for making tamales so it was a different texture than we are used to but tasted yummy!   It was so fun walk down the hall and smell all the traditional smells coming out of our different apartments.  There was lots of borrowing of spices and serving dishes as we all prepared for our feast.

These are the two Dutch Apple Pies with and oatmeal strusel topping that turned out really well.  Couldn't find any canned pumpkin or any squash that looked like pumpkin but we did find pumpkin pies in a nice bakery here so we bought two of them.  We ended up with 6 pies which was more than we needed but then, when do we ever really NEED pies?  

We used the dining room table in the president's house for our buffet table and then ate outside on the patio.  It was a gorgeous day to eat outside - probably about 70 degrees.  Just right! We really enjoyed our first Guatemalan Thanksgiving.

Here are all the 20 temple missionaries, including the temple presidency and President Galvez's  granddaughter, who is visiting for a week.  Before we were through, we had 26 people there for our Thanksgiving dinner.  For our activity, since we couldn't really all watch football, I shared the story of the pilgrims first year in the new world when they just about starved to death and some days they had only 5 kernels of corn for each person to eat and   I did it all in Spanish!  We passed around some bowls of blue corn and each couple took 5 kernels to drop on their plate as they shared their blessings.  It was a great activity and then on to the PIES!  

At 6:00 we all gathered in the common living room on our floor and decorated the Christmas tree.  Of course, the only one who could put the star on the top was Ken Meadows and he did it easily, (sort of like our tall son-in-law Ed and his tall boys).

There were several boxes of ornaments and decorations to use so we had to decide on a theme which turned out to be silver and blue.  While the men wrapped white lights on the tree, we fluffed up the bows to go on after the silver and blue ornaments.  I had Kenny G's Christmas album playing on my laptop which added a festive air also.

And here is our finished Christmas Tree!  There is another beautiful one downstairs in the entryway to the annex where we live which is green and is decorated with large ribbon wrapped around it.  All around the bottom of it are live poinsettias.  Beautiful!  These people really love Christmas!  We have been singing Christmas songs since October when we first got here.  The stores have had Christmas up since the middle of October.  I love it! 

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!  It is a good day to count our blessings and we have many!