iNotes: 23 November, 2006

Greetings from Knoxville!

I wanted to write you all and wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving. I know that sounds sort of weird. This is the first Thanksgiving in five years where we have been in the states. I always felt it was weird being overseas on Thanksgiving and how you handle Thanksgiving or not. Some people have family celebrations. Others of you have Thanksgiving outreach parties. It was always sort of weird with school age children since they have school in Spain. We did the latter (had Thanksgiving meal with our neighbors) over the last five years and we really miss that. Several of our friends in Spain have told us that they will miss those parties. I am not sure they miss us or the food but those parties were times where we were thankful.

I hope no matter where you read this short note that you will have a HAPPY day and that you will find some things to be thankful about. We are having a bit of an unusual Thanksgiving in that we are here but also our daughter is recovering from her gall bladder operation. She had the operation yesterday so she could recover during the rest of the week and not miss as much school this way. She has had lots of stomach problems since this summer. Even while we were in Spain she was having some problems. It progressively got worse. She has had most every test that could be given. She had some of the tests that as we get older we come to dread such as the colonoscopy. After all of the tests including much blood work they discovered that she had (it is now no more) a low functioning gall bladder and some pretty significant food allergies plus what is called Celiac’s disease which is an intolerance to wheat.

We hope that by removing the gall bladder it will solve some of her problem but most likely we will have to help her with this diet in order to give her more relief. That brings me to the thankful part. We are thankful that we have been able to go through this experience here. This is not what we came over here for but you know our God is an ALL KNOWING GOD and He knew best. We are thankful for His plans and for His purposes. It may have not been what we had planned for this Fall but we trust in our Lord and our Provider.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The McCrarys