Happy Turkey Day! Happy Thanksgiving! Happy stuff your face with pie day!

We hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving this week! We had a very interesting crazy,chaotic, weird, good, a little sad…day…I am sure you did too. I find these words familiar to thanksgiving time. Ok gather ’round, let me tell you a story.

Jeff and I decided to go to the Fuller SIS (intercultural studies) Thanksgiving gathering to share it with students who don’t have family around and international students. We volunteered to make a turkey to bring. This was the second turkey that I have ever cooked. The one I made last year turned out a little dry so we decided that brining the turkey was the best option to keep it moist. And hopefully, with it being the second turkey, I wouldn’t be so worried about under cooking it. Anyway, we got the brining set up the day before. We couldn’t find a brining bag and thus decided an oven bag was the next best option. We also didn’t have a pot/bucket to hold our 15lb. turkey while it brined, so we popped it in the foil pan it would eventually cook in. As we were checking on the fat bird later that night, the oven bag ripped a little on the foil pan. Then disaster ensued as the brine spilled out of the top of the bag onto the wall, floor, table, and surrounding chairs. Two hours later, of re-scrubing the entire room to make it non-sticky from the apple juice and brown sugar in the brine, we finally got the mess cleaned up. Thankfully, the turkey was fine and we saved most of the brine. The next morning we were getting ready to put the bird in the oven and we notice something strange about the skin. It had the tips of the feathers still stuck in it underneath. We couldn’t see them very well, but you could feel them. Breakdown number 3,4,and 5 followed this discovery. I decided to get our “fresh” bird from Trader Joes because it was hormone free/cage free. Jeff did some research for me and found that not only is the bird hormone free, but they kill the birds “humanely,” and thus the process doesn’t get rid of all the feather pieces. After much research and freaking out about someone choking on a feather tip from our turkey, we decided the best course of action were tweezers. It didn’t help that air kept getting caught as we turned the bird over and over searching for pieces, that it sounded like the turkey kept farting at us. One LONG hour later, our turkey was de-feathered! Because of that unexpected event, the turkey was a little late to the party, but it was devoured! And I have to say, it was so juicy! Jeff and I will definitely be making the brine again, probably with a less-fresh turkey.

Oh our funny stories and woes of the kitchen. I am going to stop telling you all the bad stories so you don’t think we are bad cooks. But this was too funny not to tell! We enjoyed a pie swap with our Reality LA friends after dinner, and it was a much-needed sugar comma to relax from the adrenaline earlier. I brought Gigi’s (my great-grandmother) chocolate pie, and it was a hit!

IN OTHER THANKFUL NEWS, I got a job! I will start caring for a 4 month old little girl next week. I am so excited to have a baby girl this time! Can we just all explore God’s awesomeness in this provision! We plan to leave California in the summer. The dad is a teacher and thus they are fully flexible with whenever we need to leave because he has that time free. They are both Fuller grads, and Christian, and very supportive of our journey to the mission field. They, too, are looking to transition into ministry positions by fall. God is so awesome! And even more, I will be working in the mornings, so that I can still work with Mr. Z  in the afternoons.

I do ask that you pray for my relationship with his mom and family. They are not Christian but have been amazingly supportive through this job hunt, and I am having more and more opportunities arise to share God’s love for us. I will just say it again, God is awesome!

Please keep Jeff in your prayers the next two weeks! He is entering the last week of classes and then finals week of the quarter. He is also working on finding a practicum site for the spring. This has been a tedious and hard process over the last couple of quarters. Thankfully, this break is the longest he has and will have about 3 weeks to recover from this constant state of busy.

We are so thankful for all of your prayers and support while we are here. We are sad we can’t celebrate with all our friends and family in Georgia this holiday season but we are thinking about you and praying for you. I can’t wait for christmas cards and updated pictures! And we are so thankful for our friends here in California for making this feel like home this season too!

“Rejoice in the Lord Always, again I will say, Rejoice.” Philippians 4:4

Love,

Jeff and Lauren