This is not a joke. I was glad to have passed on the tights when I found out on the ride up to dinner that our hosts were mennonite and when someone mentioned that she was not as obedient as she should be to her husband, it hurt her so bad that she started wearing the little white net hat they wear to show her submission. She also broke off contact with the people who had said that because it hurt so much.

Our host's brother was there. He had just finished training for Campus Crusade for Christ and was off to Moscow to evangelize. It was interesting to hear that churches and religious organizations that were not established before communism fell were basically excluded by some law. These means that the Russian Orthodox and the few protestant churches that had managed to get a toehold before Gorbachev were ok, but all others had stringent restrictions on what they could do.

I'm assuming the Jewish religion was included in the pre-glasnost religions, though I doubt that Russia would ever really allow much leeway to the Jewish religion. Ain't that the way it is. Everyone wants freedom of religion when they're on the outs but as soon as they're in they want all other religions restricted. This is like the pilgrims (since this is Thanksgiving) who came to the new world so they could be free to practice their religion and then persecuted other religions.

There was dear Mexican lady who had worked in New York City till retirement, when she was going back to stay with her 90 year old father, in Mexico City, till he died. He died just before she retired so she came out to Arizona to help with translations into Spanish for the bible translators. She is very good at this and is now returning to Mexico City, after eight years, as the translation office is moving down there. And can she talk!

A snowbird couple were there. They are among the many who come down every year to help at the center. They build and repair and are very welcomed. Many of them hook up right at the center in their motorhomes, but this couple had a trailer in the mobile home park across the street that they stayed in for half the year. We heard the interesting fact that every year when they return they find that more of their friends have died.

My father mentioned when he picked me up that I seemed to have put on more weight. As we were relaxing after dinner he mentioned that I seemed to have a lot of gray hair. I've had gray hair for years and that's just my father. He is the sweetest thing but has never really developed the slightest sign of tactfulness. I will say that he's not snoopy nor does he try to tell me how to run my life, but he just says what he's thinking. I rather like this as I have such a problem actually saying what I'm thinking. I always think too much about how it will be taken.

The food was delicious. I enjoyed talking with the ladies in the kitchen, before eating, as the men sat in the living room. At least they weren't watching television. I enjoyed meeting everyone and talking with them, though I was often at a loss for words, to put it mildly. I enjoyed spending some time with my father and meeting his friends. I'm just glad that we weren't there all day.

As my father was driving me back home, we took a detour through Sun City as he wanted to show how the development has grown. This is a phenomenon that I truly do not understand as I dislike places that are too cute and too homogenized, and there is nothing more homogenized than a Sun City. All the couples look alike and seem to do the same things and go to the same places. The thing that I think I would dislike the most is that there are not children. I'm not a big children person but I don't think I would like a place where everyone is the same age. I like a little intergenerational diversity.

I've been watching the specials on television all evening and being thankful that I didn't have to watch any football games and was able to spend time with my father. That's not a bad Thanksgiving.