Happy Thanksgiving Montenegro Style

Since they do not celebrate Thanksgiving here it seemed weird to have all the stores open as we went to pick up our turkey that I had to order previously.  Ordering it was an experience, I google translated a note that read "I would like to order a 6-8 Kilo fresh turkey for Thursday morning"  Well, I should have written the note in all caps because they do not write here like we do.  The butcher could not read my note, but finally I supposed we had the order in with a lot of pointing and fingers showing numbers.  So off we went to pick up the turkey (which is not common to find here) on Thursday morning ...when we got there, he recognized me and knew I wanted the turkey.  When he brought it out, it was HUGE.  8 kilos is a 20 pound turkey for 5 of us!  IT WAS 40 Euros which is $56.00 US dollars!!!  But I had ordered it so we bought it.

When we got home, I stuffed it with bread I had dried and made into stuffing (you can't by this here either) and put it in the oven where it barely fit.  I had to buy a pumpkin the day before and cook it in the oven so that I could puree the pulp (I don't have a blender either) to make the pumpkin pie.  No shortening for the crust either so I had to use lard. That pie was a chore!  They do not have pumpkin in a can or evaporated milk here....but the Stays from Germany had brought me a few cartons of Evaporated  Milk when they came to visit last month.  Thus a pumpkin pie was born....But I will not do that again as it took me a whole afternoon!!

We had our 2 young missionaries and one member plus us for Thanksgiving.  One of the missionaries is from Austria (where they also do not celebrate Thanksgiving)  But finally all was done and we ate and stuffed ourselves.  We had put the turkey back in the oven after slicing off enough to feed us all because I thought it needed to cook for a little while longer.   Well, after dinner I was getting all the meat off the turkey to give to the young missionaries and found out that I had forgotten to remove the stuffing for dinner!!...Luckily there is still some gravy and I am going to have stuffing and gravy for lunch today!

We are working on several projects this month and some that will take place in the next year.  We have passed our 6 months here so now there is one year left.  Next week we will be traveling by train overnight (sleeper car) to Belgrade, Serbia.  We get on the train at 8PM and arrive at 6 in the morning!  On December 18th there is a mission Christmas Party in Zagreb, Croatia that we are going to fly to.  That will make 6 countries in the Balkans we have traveled to in the last 6 months.  The talk is that we might fly to Germany in February.  By the way, Christmas here is on January 7th...too weird!

 Oldest tree in Europe.  This is an Olive tree that was alive when Christ was on the earth!  Amazing!

 View from road on the way to a northern village.

Dental School in Podgorica, Montenegro