Thanksgiving in Portugal- Lot´s to be thankful for

Thanksgiving day found us deeply involved in a Zone Conference with 20+ other missionaries and the only vestige of a Thanksgiving Feast was chicken on the pizza at lunch. We found the Zone Conference exceptional with an incredible commitment from a roomfull of 19-21 year old young men and a handful of sisters. The meeting was virtually conducted and the training was given by these young people. President Torgan and his wife Rosa each gave some instruction but all in all, it was a meeting of young people teaching young people.
 You would think that on a holiday the traffic would drop off. But no, it was a busy day as you can see from the picture out the window of our apartment from 5 stories up. I suspect there is no respect for Thanksgiving in Lisboa.

Not to miss the chance to celebrate, Eileen put the best face on some elements of a Thanksgiving Feast for a big Sunday dinner (3 days after Thanksgiving) for the missionaries in our neighborhood. The missionaries that were native to Portugal found it entertaining (two young men and a sister, all from Porto). We had stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams, rolls, special jello arrangement, grilled chicken (cousin to the turkey) and brownies with ice cream. The Portuguese Sister liked the stuffing so much she took the leftovers home with her.Eileen pulled off a great feat as all the missionaries and guests loaded up their plates. Ryan Turner, red head on right, is a graduate student from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and didn´t mind joining in the festivities. Brownies are unique to the U.S. we suspect and thus the U.S. Elders didn´t pass up the chance to eat every crumb.

 Eileen also took the opportunity to get a haircut for the occasion and you can see, they do a good job here. The map behind shows Portugal and many of the cities we will be visiting as Kent was just called to serve in the Mission Presidency and will help call, train and help the branches in remote areas like Beija. Eileen was called as a training specialist and will help on all the trips. We will be visiting Beija twice a month and Santarém once a month.

It took four different tables in our apartment to create one long table. Yes, it was lumpy and irregular but as long as you put your drink down in the right place you were OK. Elder Ferreira (front) and Dias (third from right) were two of native Elders that were introduced to "stuffing". We ended the meal with each person volunteering their thoughts on what they were thankful for. Everyone was far from home and each person´s thoughts were amazing and left an incredible spirit of thanksgiving with us. It seemed that most everyone was thankful for a person that had a significant impact on their life....brother, parent, etc. And overall, we were all filled to the brim with thanks for the gospel of Jesus Christ that brings peace and joy to the world when we live his teachings to love one another.