Forget stuffing the turkey–we stuffed our apartment this Thanksgiving! Not only did Glen’s brother and Paula’s college roommate travel down from Washington state, but we were able to host over 20 Stanford students in our home for lunch on turkey day (nearly 30 total people)!
Let me tell you–that’s an awful lot of people to cram into one apartment!
In case you’re wondering why they didn’t head home to visit their families, all the students were international students (mostly from Singapore). Traveling internationally and getting jet lagged is a big hassle (and pretty expensive) for such a short break from school.
For many of them, this was their first real celebration of Thanksgiving. Think about it–how many other countries celebrate the pilgrims’ survival? To my knowledge, only Canada…
Several of our guests were already following Christ, but many have yet to experience God’s transforming love. The Kingdom of God flows through relationships, and so please pray that God would use our hospitality as a catalyst for spiritual growth in these students’ lives.
Cooking for so many people was a huge task, as was seating them. Thanks to Greg, Rachel, and Ailin for helping to prepare the food, and many thanks to Southbay Christian Center and Three Cities Assembly for loaning us chairs and tables, and a heap of thanks to Pastor Mike Brown of International Assembly of God (as well as his worship leader Paul) and Josh Wong and Ming Fai Wong for helping to cart the chairs and tables to our place. We couldn’t have done it without you!
UPDATE: our Photo Gallery has been updated with pictures from the Thanksgiving feast!