The first Thanksgiving Day I spent outside the United States was quite an experience. I was a 20-year-old Ambassador College student, working as a volunteer teacher in a refugee camp in the golden triangle region of northern Thailand. We were doing our best to prepare Laotian refugees who had fled the communist regime in their country, for the move to the host countries who had agreed to take them in. We taught them English or French, and the rudiments of Western culture they would need to get along in their new homes. It was a challenge. How do you explain all the comforts and complexities of life in a Western metropolis, things like supermarkets, shopping malls and superhighways, to people who have lived all their lives in remote jungle villages? Many of my students had lived by slash-and-burn farming. They lived in bamboo houses with dirt floors.

While I was teaching, I was also learning. This was my initiation to life in what we optimistically call "developing" countries. The gritty reality of life for the majority of the world's population struck home hard. I learned about the shorter life expectancy people have in such countries; 55 or 60 was old for them. They were more frequently ill, often with diseases we no longer worry about in the West. I discovered how much more difficult it is to earn one's daily bread, and how long hours of labor may not guarantee subsistence to a family. And I saw the suffering of the refugee: family members separated and lost during their escape, or killed by pursuers. There is the loss and disorientation that comes of having to abandon one's home and country with only what can be carried by hand.

A Thai Thanksgiving

It was in this context that my friend Dave Baker and I, who were the only two English teachers at the Chiang Kham refugee camp, received an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner. An American missionary lady had invited the various aid workers and other missionaries in the area. We were a group of 10 including an Italian doctor, a Swiss dentist and his wife, an aid worker from somewhere down under. We were thrilled to receive the invitation because Dave and I thought we were going to have our usual meal of a bowl of rice with a bit of water buffalo meat for Thanksgiving. But our hostess had managed to find a plump turkey, not common in northern Thailand. She made stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy. She prepared a sauce out of a local fruit which tasted like cranberry, and made a pie out of a local squash that tasted just like pumpkin. I was more thankful for that meal in Chiang Kham than I ever had been during Thanksgiving as a child. Not that I hadn't been thankful before. It's just that I hadn't realized how many blessings I had, until I could compare with people who'd never had most of them. It had never occurred to me that our regular Thanksgiving meal each year would represent a never-in-a-lifetime experience to a big part of the world's population.

A Short List of Blessings

Since that Thanksgiving spent in the golden triangle, I've visited and sometimes worked in other "developing countries" in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. I'd like to share a short list of physical blessings I took for granted before those travels. These are written from an American point of view, but they are generally true for all the nations that make up what we call the West. I never miss a meal unless I choose to. Like many Americans, I worry more about eating too much than not eating enough. Most people in the world don't eat their fill every day. According to the 1999 World Health Organization report (all of the statistics to follow come from that report), half the children growing up in Guatemala will have their growth stunted by malnutrition. This happens to over 60 percent of the children in Ethiopia. Granted, these countries are on the worst end of the spectrum, but there are many others in Africa, the Americas, Asia and even Europe where malnutrition stunts a substantial percentage of the children.

I have a generous life expectancy. As of 1998, a boy born in Haiti had a life expectancy of 51 years. A girl born in Bangladesh has a life expectancy of 58 years. A male Rwandan child will live, on average, to be only 39. This means I'll have 20 or 30 extra years to live compared to many of my counterparts in the world. Barring something unusual, I'll get to watch my children grow all the way up, and have a good chance of meeting my grandchildren, and even of watching them grow up. My family receives excellent medical care. This is not something to be taken for granted as the new millennium dawns. Though I may sometimes complain about the cost of medical coverage, and the difficulties of getting insurance, my family has access to some of the best medical care in the world. Much of the world has only the most rudimentary of care. Over 10 percent of the children born in Pakistan will die before age 5. The figure reaches a shattering 25 percent of the children born in Afghanistan.

My children receive free public education. While our public education system has its problems, even with its flaws we can be thankful for it. I have friends in Cameroon who can't afford to send all their children to school. At a cost of about $50 per year, per student, they must choose which of their children they will send, when they can find the money to send any of them. Since most of the people in the country are unemployed, and there is no social security system, they have no guaranteed income. This makes going to school a precarious proposition for most children there. The average man in Cameroon over 25 years of age has three years of schooling. The average woman has 1.7 years.

I can count on the free and fair election of the nation's leaders. Most of the countries in the world claim to be democratic, but for many of them this is true in name only. I may not agree with our leaders on everything (I don't), and I may even worry about the fitness of some of them to govern (I do), but I don't have to seriously worry about them fixing elections, or staging a military coup d'état and refusing to leave office. Many countries in Asia and South America, and almost all countries in Africa, live in perpetual fear of just such things. In some regions of the world, domination by the strongest and most ruthless is just standard operating procedure.

By hard work I can advance in the career of my choice. I've met many very intelligent, capable people in Asia, Africa and even Europe who have a good education—sometimes graduate degrees—job experience and the willingness to work hard, but who are unemployed or underemployed, or in dead-end jobs, because the economic situation in their country stifles advancement. You remember the old joke about the toy designed to help children learn about life: no matter how you put it together, it doesn't work. That joke is economic reality in much of the world. People with equivalent education levels and experience, may have a tenth or less of our purchasing power. And if the average American so chooses, he can go back to school (while keeping his current job) and change careers to one he thinks he'll enjoy more. We can advance as far as our ability and drive will take us. That's a luxury most people in the world don't have.

The blessings mentioned above are not things I've earned. I just happen to have been born in the United States. In my experience, we Americans are no smarter than other peoples, but in many, many ways we are more blessed than most. Yes, we work hard, but others in the world work as hard or harder with much less to show for it. We are like children growing up in a wealthy family. Because we've always had certain blessings, we can easily take them for granted. Someone once said: "He who is not grateful for the good things he has would not be happy with what he wishes he had." Something to think about. Some of our brethren reading this article in parts of the developing world don't now have the blessings I've just listed, probably never will in this life. I hope we all pray for one another regularly, that our Father will fulfill all our needs including the physical, all around the world (Philippians 4:19).

Spiritual Blessings

But most importantly, wherever we live on this earth, as members of the Church of God we all have blessings that those not called by God can't yet have. These are the most important blessings of all, because they're spiritual in nature. We have the privilege of knowing God the Father and Jesus Christ (John 6:40-44), knowing God's way of life (Acts 18:25-26) and His purpose for mankind. Our lives have meaning, and an ultimate purpose going far beyond this physical existence. We have the amazing destiny of becoming full-fledged members of the family of God and inheriting all creation (Romans 8:16-23). What wonderful things for which to be thankful! There are no greater blessings than those God is giving to us. That's a good reason for us to follow the encouragement that the apostle Paul gave the church in Ephesus to be "giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 5:20). Thankfulness is to be a way of life for Christians. So those of us who live in nations celebrating a Thanksgiving Day should be especially thankful, but not on that day only. Our thanksgiving should go on all year round. After all, our blessings never stop.