Happy Thanksgiving!

When I need a recipe from the USA, I trust Martha!

It's my favorite holiday: Thanksgiving.

It's not about some national history for me. It is about thankfulness and family. I love my family and I live thousands of miles away from them.

I am immensely thankful for my personal heritage - for my parents and grandparents and all my aunts and uncles. I am thankful for growing up in a place that allowed me to be myself. I am thankful for growing up knowing that "Jesus loves me" and "I'm something special" and even a little of "I can do anything you can do better!" America is like that... we grow up believing in positivity and possibility and individual potential. We grow up learning that God helped us get here... we didn't do everything right... we can still move ahead. We have another chance to make things better. We have a responsibility to make change happen.

In today's world, many people think that how I grew up in a small Indiana town was a limitation. They point out that some degree of closed-mindedness has made us intolerant of otherness. They focus on those who shout from rooftops, but they forget the quiet ones who love more than they hate.  As a whole, groups always look so homogenous. Get to know each other one at a time. You will see that there is a lot of individual shades of personhood that make up that picture you think you see.

Happy Thanksgiving! Celebrate your family! Celebrate your uniqueness - no matter where you came from. Celebrate that you can be a part of a new future in some way - right where you are today! Celebrate that God loves your neighbor - even if you didn't choose that neighbor!

I'm going to bake a pumpkin pie today. It's the most American thing I can do! I'll make it from a real pumpkin like I did in Mozambique. I'll make it from a pumpkin that grew in my friend's garden here in Sweden. I'll make it with about double the spice that the recipe calls for because that I how my mom makes it - and it is way better that way!

Have a thankful, hopeful and special day!