Thanksgiving 2014

Dear Friends and Fellow Travelers through this life, Happy Thanksgiving! If you are among our international friends, I wish you a joyous Thursday.

We are on the road, but spending a couple of months in our motorhome in Tumwater, WA. For our older friends, that is the home of Olympia Beer. The massive brewery plant is empty now. The original plant sits at the bottom of a ravine next to Olympia Falls. Those falls and the pure water were Olympia Beer's claim to fame. You might remember the advertising jingle - It's the water, the water, the water, the water that makes Olympia Beer . . . 

It's frosty out today. Our car has ice on it. The sun is out, and it promises to be a beautiful day. So we are having coffee and waiting for the sun to get high enough to melt the ice off the car windows. We will be spending the day with our daughter Laura and granddaughters Madie and Kathryn. Last night we went over to their house and helped make pies, corn casserole, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole and stuffing. 




Today, the turkey goes in early, as Madie has to work this afternoon. Gary is in Houston with his sister Nancy's family, where he begins cancer treatment on Saturday. He will be down there getting treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center until mid-January. Then he will come back up here to finish treatment in Olympia. Today we are thankful for his life and remembering him in our prayers. The rest of our family is in Kentucky, where they will be getting together with friends. We miss them, but love that we can "face-time" on our Apple computer devices.


I am thankful for many things. My family. My friends. My faith. I am especially thankful that Jesus chose to become human, for our sakes, and paid the ultimate price for my transgressions and for all mankind, that we may spend eternity with Him. I rejoice in my salvation, that has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with God.

A friend posted this on his page (Mark Mynheir) and I wanted to post it here. What an amazing proclamation. I am so thankful and grateful for a country where we can live in freedom, travel freely, speak and worship freely and enjoy all our god-given liberties.

"Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best." - George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789