God provided a traditional Thanksgiving
Spiritual Reflections
Pat Ozment Jr. IMB Missionary to Ghana
Thanksgiving, our family has much to be thankful for. We have been blessed in ways too numerous to count.

Our three children are all sources of pride and joy to us. Each of them serves God in different ways, as He has called them. Each of them has a spouse who we love like our own, and don't even start us on our grandchildren.

So, Thanksgiving is special. It also has always been the holiday when we all gathered together. Because of the grandchildren each family has Christmas at their own homes, but Thanksgiving has always been at our house.

Peggy and the girls would all prepare their family's favorite dishes and I'd usually smoke a turkey and we would sit down together, all 17 of us, and enjoy the food and company. Then those who were so inclined would tromp off to the woods for a bit of hunting, while the rest just visited.

Last year all of that changed.

Peggy and I were in Rockville, Va. for our training as missionaries. So we gathered at Christmas in Pell City for Christmas at Julie and Eric's, and then on the third of January we left them all behind for Africa.

So this year Thanksgiving looked bleak. We still had all our blessings to be thankful for, but we would not have anything like the traditional Thanksgiving.

In fact we would spend some of Thanksgiving Day in airports as we traveled to a conference in Abidjan, and it seemed there would be no turkey in our "Turkey Day."

After a sandwich with our friends Jimmy and Sylvia Huey in Accra, where we had a layover in our journey, we were invited by them to go for a "drive in the country."

We ended up at Ghana Christian University College, with about 40 missionaries from various backgrounds and church affiliations, for a traditional Thanksgiving feast and fellowship. After a scrumptious meal, of roast turkey and all the trimmings, we sang hymns, and gave testimony about how God had blessed us.

Thanks to the Huey's we were reminded the thing we have most to be thankful for is wherever we are, we are part of God's family.

Romans 8:16 says, "We are the adopted children of God." Gather with His family, and I'll see you in church.

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