Thanksgiving in Uruguay

Jerry and I have much to be grateful for. We have each other for one thing. I have often thought about how hard it would be to be here without him. I feel for the young missionaries. Because we are together, life seems much more normal. We have 37 years of common memories and life experiences to keep us from getting too homesick.

The church here is also very similar. The talks are about gospel subjects and the lessons are well prepared. I am always impressed with the members here. Our ward has about 60 people who attend every week, but the bishop has a goal of 90. Actually, we have that many active members, but their attendance isn´t consistent. It´s the same everywhere.

We have been having missionaries to dinner, and for Thanksgiving, we had the Hermanas from our ward to dinner at 8:15. After I invited them, I realized I had never made any of the food we eat at Thanksgiving here in Uruguay. We didn´t have a potato peeler, potato masher, wire whip, or a pie plate. Turkeys here are very small (9 lbs. or so) and the one I saw in the freezer case was $50 US! We decided that chicken was going to work just fine. But I hadn´t roasted a chicken either. They don´t have Stovetop stuffing mix, canned pumpkin or canned yams. SO, I started figuring out how to make Thanksgiving dinner here.

I checked at several supermarkets and sundry stores looking for the utensils and pans I would need. There are no stores like Walmart where you can get everything you need in one place, which isn´t all bad. I kind of like that, but it does make it more complicated when trying to find different things. I found everything I needed between three stores.

I checked the internet for the recipes I needed. At the supermarket, I found fresh potatoes, sweet potatoes, short skinny celery with lots of leaves, sage, flour, sugar, but not shortening or lard, brown sugar, cloves, ground ginger, or poultry seasoning. I didn´t want to try cooking one of the fresh pumpkins I saw there. It was half green and I wasn´t sure if it was orange inside or not, so I decided to make a carrot pie instead, like my mom does. Thank you, Mom, and also for teaching me how to make stuffing from scratch.

The night before (after work, and going shopping for the ingredients)I cooked and blended the carrots (there is a blender in our apartment), baked the sweet potatoes and cut them up, and toasted and diced the bread for the stuffing. On Thanksgiving Day, we went to work as usual. We could have taken the whole day, but we were short volunteers, and it would have left the office short-handed. I left work an hour early, and went to the local store and got a fresh chicken (5 lb. or more), whipping cream, pie plate, etc. I rode the bus home and started on dinner.

I put the chicken in the oven with the carrot pie (I used butter instead of shortening for the crust.) Next I put the potatoes on to boil, and started to sautee the celery, onions, and garlic in butter for the stuffing. I made the glaze for the sweet potatoes out of white sugar and butter, hoping it would carmelize. I poured it over the sweet potatoes and baked them in a hot oven (200 C.) after the chicken was done. The sauce caramelized in the oven and the yellow yams turned more orange. Yes!


The chicken turned out just like a small turkey. It was beautiful! The potatoes and gravy were delicious! Jerry said the stuffing was the best he´d ever had. The pie turned out and I served it with whipped cream that was whipped with a wire whisk in a coffee mug.



Jerry is holding the fork with his left hand while he carves with his right. The Hermanas are happy to celebrate their productive day with American food!


Hermana Casebolt and Hermana Gardner were so exited when they came. They had found 6 new investigators that day! They had looked up former contacts to give them one last chance. One the way to the last contact, they had talked to a woman sweeping the sidewalk in front of her store. The lady was very receptive about the Joseph Smith story, the Priesthood being restored, and everything! What a wonderful thing to eat dinner together and hear about the amazing work they were doing! We have been truly blessed!

As for me, I felt very blessed to be able to serve a dinner to guests where EVERYTHING I had made was an experiment. That was a little scary, but it worked out. I think someone was praying extra hard for the Hermanas to have a good Thanksgiving and I was an instrument in the Lord´s hands to make it happen. Your prayers in our behalf were felt because I truly felt guided. (Don´t laugh--it was hard.)

My Spanish is getting better. Today was a good day. I explained in fairly good Spanish (with conjugated verbs) to one of the darling young women volunteers, how to make a list of the people who have resumes here. I showed her how to cut and paste with the keyboard, and how to evaluate the resumes to see if any important information was missing. She understood me and was excited to do something that the whole office was working on. I prayed for the gift of tongues this morning, and was happy when I realized that the Lord was answering my prayer. He is truly there for us and for everyone who asks. I know we are being especially blessed because of our calling, however, the Lord will bless you in your righteous efforts also. No task is too small for the Lord. He is there for us.