-^-for posterity-^-

this may be familiar to some of you. i was asked to write something for a special thanksgiving service at church to be read aloud. this is what i’m thankful for:

I have wonderful memories of Thanksgiving from when I was younger. I remember sitting in the living room in my grandparent’s home across from the Franconia Elementary School. All of us cousins would play games, watch football on T.V. and laugh. Thanksgiving was always a time for family. It was a time to eat too much, watch TV and fall asleep on the sofa.

For me, being away from home on Thanksgiving is bitter-sweet. I loath the fact that I am so far away from my family and friends but I know it will all be worth it in the end.

I miss the food. Who wouldn’t miss their grandmother’s home cooked Thanksgiving meal topped off with my great-aunt Eva’s oyster stuffing. In Long Xuyen, the small Vietnamese town where I teach, I’m lucky enough to have two other foreigners. We have spent the past week and a half trying to replicate a traditional Thanksgiving meal. We found a turkey on a local farm. We decided it wouldn’t be too hard to make stuffing. We gave up on cranberry sauce and are going to mash our potatoes with a fork. Our largest hurdle is finding an oven. This culture doesn’t use oven’s to cook and we have gone to a metal shop to see if someone could make one for us. We don’t know if it’ll work, but we have our finger’s crossed.

While we are not guaranteed a traditional meal, there are still a number of things I am thankful for, things I took for granted when I was soundly napping on my grandparent’s carpet.

I am thankful that I have been able to explore the world. I have been blessed with the resources and opportunities that only a handful of people in the world have access to. Many of my conversations in Vietnam have been with students, or young people who want to go and see another part of the world. They want to learn a new language and a new culture. However, there is always a problem. Normally, there is no money or no scholarship support. I sit and talk with them and watch their eyes. Their eyes tell the whole story. Their eyes are deep and sad. They long to have the same opportunity that I had by right of birth.

I feel guilt and frustration. I’m not making the best of my time here. I should be working harder and making something spectacular all of that I have been given.

The world’s an incredible place if you let it be.

I am thankful for all the opportunities and resources that I have been given. Those that have given me those things deserve the thanks. In Vietnamese culture, people pray to their ancestors. Every house has a small alter with a grainy, black and white picture of the family’s grandparents. Every day the family lights incense sticks and places them in front of the alter after saying a short prayer. The idea of praying to ones ancestors doesn’t really resonate well with me. I was raised in the Mennonite church and still believe in Jesus’ teachings of love, peace and justice.

However, while the idea is a bit strange, ancestral veneration has taught me an important lesson that I have overlooked most of my life. Everything I am rests on those that came before me. I am my family’s history pushed on into the next generation. For me to be thankful for what I am and what I have, I must also be thankful for my relatives who allowed this all to happen. It’s a simple lesson, but one that I gleefully ignored thanks to the flash and pomp of our info-tainment culture.

I thank Raymond and Anna Moyer for putting so much energy and love into raising my father, David. I thank Kenneth and Violet Aeschliman out in Archebold Ohio for teaching my mother patience and love.

I am also grateful for all of the hundreds of people who have shaped me along the way. I am thankful for the Salford community and all of their support. I am thankful for every Sunday school teacher, song leader, pastor, janitor and member of the church who has given me a bit of advice, some direction or even a friendly smile.

I am grateful for all the teachers who have helped me to see the world from a different perspective. Without their guidance I would surely not be where I am today. I am grateful for their help, their guidance, their patience.

The list of gratitude would go on indefinitely. I would thank all of you and all of those who supported you and all of your ancestors throughout history. I would eventually end up in one place, I would say thank you to God, the creator of all of us.

Thank you God for blessing me in so many ways. Thank you for the opportunity to travel and the joy of seeing the world from a different perspective. Thank you for allowing me to be raised in such a wonderful community and with such a loving family. And most importantly, I would like to thank you for giving us all the ability to love and to do so unconditionally. May we all be grateful for that gift.