Thanksgiving (Gratitude)

Scripture

D & C 59:7

7 Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things.

Hymn

I am Glad for Many Things Primary Songbook pg 151

I am Glad for Many Things, Many Things, Many Things.
I am Glad for Many Things That are Mine Today.

Thank you, Thank you, My Heart Sings, My Heart Sings, My Heart Sings.
Thank you for the Many Things That are Mine Today.

Count Your Many Blessings Hymn 241

1. When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings; name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

[Chorus]
Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your blessings;
See what God hath done.
Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your many blessings;
See what God hath done.

2. Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings; ev’ry doubt will fly,
And you will be singing as the days go by.

3. When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you his wealth untold.
Count your many blessings; money cannot buy
Your reward in heaven nor your home on high.

4. So amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged; God is over all.
Count your many blessings; angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.

Lesson

What holiday is on Thursday?
What do we do on Thanksgiving?
Why do we have Thanksgiving?

*For Younger Children* (Share this story)

Aaron watched the snowy scenery whiz by the car window. His family was returning home after spending Thanksgiving with their grandparents and cousins. Soon he fell asleep in the backseat, along with his two sisters.

Suddenly the car swerved, and Aaron jerked awake. The car rolled over once and then came to a stop with a jolt.

“What happened?” Aaron asked.

“I fell asleep at the wheel,” Dad said in a shaky voice. He reached out to touch Mom’s cheek. “Are you all right?”

Mom nodded and turned to look at Aaron and his sisters.

“We’re all right, Mom,” Aaron said. He was grateful his parents always insisted that everyone wear seat belts and that Kaitlyn was in her car seat.

Nicole reached for his hand. Aaron squeezed her hand in return.

The family sat huddled in the car, waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

When the paramedics arrived, they examined everyone. “It’s a miracle that your family came through alive,” one of the paramedics said.

“It is a miracle,” Mom said.

The ambulance took Aaron’s family to the nearest hospital. Mom got six stitches on her cheek, but no one else needed treatment.

Then they took their car to a service station to have it checked out. The car was safe to drive, so Aaron’s family resumed their trip. When they finally got home, it was just before midnight. Everyone felt tired and shaken.

“There is something we need to do,” Mom said.

They all knelt on the living room floor. Dad paused a few moments. Then he began, “Father, we come to thee in thanksgiving.”

After the prayer, everyone remained on their knees. Then Mom got up and headed to the kitchen. “I think we all need something to eat,” she said. She pulled meat and bread from the refrigerator and started making sandwiches.

Aaron thought it was funny that they were having dinner at midnight. Then he realized they hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. “Is this like a second Thanksgiving?” he asked.

Dad smiled for the first time since the accident. “That’s right, Aaron. We have more than usual to thank Heavenly Father for.”

(Jane McBride Choate, “A Second Thanksgiving”, Friend, Nov. 2010, 36–37)

*For Teenagers* (Share this story)

It was written by Gordon Green and appeared in an American magazine over 50 years ago.

Gordon tells how he grew up on a farm in Canada, where he and his siblings had to hurry home from school while the other children played ball and went swimming. Their father, however, had the capacity to help them understand that their work amounted to something. This was especially true after harvesttime when the family celebrated Thanksgiving, for on that day their father gave them a great gift. He took an inventory of everything they had.

On Thanksgiving morning he would take them to the cellar with its barrels of apples, bins of beets, carrots packed in sand, and mountains of sacked potatoes as well as peas, corn, string beans, jellies, strawberries, and other preserves which filled their shelves. He had the children count everything carefully. Then they went out to the barn and figured how many tons of hay there were and how many bushels of grain in the granary. They counted the cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and geese. Their father said he wanted to see how they stood, but they knew he really wanted them to realize on that feast day how richly God had blessed them and had smiled upon all their hours of work. Finally, when they sat down to the feast their mother had prepared, the blessings were something they felt.

Gordon indicated, however, that the Thanksgiving he remembered most thankfully was the year they seemed to have nothing for which to be grateful.

The year started off well: they had leftover hay, lots of seed, four litters of pigs, and their father had a little money set aside so that someday he could afford to buy a hay loader—a wonderful machine most farmers just dreamed of owning. It was also the year that electricity came to their town—although not to them because they couldn’t afford it.

One night when Gordon’s mother was doing her big wash, his father stepped in and took his turn over the washboard and asked his wife to rest and do her knitting. He said, “You spend more time doing the wash than sleeping. Do you think we should break down and get electricity?” Although elated at the prospect, she shed a tear or two as she thought of the hay loader that wouldn’t be bought.

So the electrical line went up their lane that year. Although it was nothing fancy, they acquired a washing machine that worked all day by itself and brilliant lightbulbs that dangled from each ceiling. There were no more lamps to fill with oil, no more wicks to cut, no more sooty chimneys to wash. The lamps went quietly off to the attic.

The coming of electricity to their farm was almost the last good thing that happened to them that year. Just as their crops were starting to come through the ground, the rains started. When the water finally receded, there wasn’t a plant left anywhere. They planted again, but more rains beat the crops into the earth. Their potatoes rotted in the mud. They sold a couple of cows and all the pigs and other livestock they had intended to keep, getting very low prices for them because everybody else had to do the same thing. All they harvested that year was a patch of turnips which had somehow weathered the storms.

Then it was Thanksgiving again. Their mother said, “Maybe we’d better forget it this year. We haven’t even got a goose left.”

On Thanksgiving morning, however, Gordon’s father showed up with a jackrabbit and asked his wife to cook it. Grudgingly she started the job, indicating it would take a long time to cook that tough old thing. When it was finally on the table with some of the turnips that had survived, the children refused to eat. Gordon’s mother cried, and then his father did a strange thing. He went up to the attic, got an oil lamp, took it back to the table, and lighted it. He told the children to turn out the electric lights. When there was only the lamp again, they could hardly believe that it had been that dark before. They wondered how they had ever seen anything without the bright lights made possible by electricity.

The food was blessed, and everyone ate. When dinner was over, they all sat quietly. Wrote Gordon:

“In the humble dimness of the old lamp we were beginning to see clearly again. …

“It [was] a lovely meal. The jack rabbit tasted like turkey and the turnips were the mildest we could recall. …

“… [Our] home … , for all its want, was so rich [to] us.”

(Thomas S. Monson, “The Divine Gift of Gratitude”, Ensign, Nov. 2010, 87–90)

Thanksgiving is a time to express gratitude and recognize all of our blessings.

Treat

Marshmallow Pilgrim Hats or Tepee Treats

Marshmallow Pilgrim Hats

Ingredients:

24 chocolate-striped shortbread cookies
12-ounce package of chocolate chips
24 marshmallows
tube of yellow decorators’ frosting

Directions:

1- Set the chocolate-striped cookies stripes down on a wax-paper-covered tray, spacing them well apart.
2- Melt the chocolate chips in a microwave or double boiler.
3- One at a time, stick a wooden toothpick into a marshmallow, dip the marshmallow into the melted chocolate, and promptly center it atop a cookie.
4- Using a second toothpick to lightly hold down the marshmallow, carefully pull out the first toothpick.
5- Chill the hats until the chocolate sets, then pipe a yellow decorators’ frosting buckle on the front of each hat.

Tepee Treats

Ingredients:

Sugar cones
Confectioners’ sugar
Unsalted butter
Vanilla extract
Cake-decorating icing
Decorative candies
Toothpicks

Directions:

1- In a mixing bowl with an electric beater set at low speed, mix 2 cups of sifted confectioners’ sugar, 1/4 cup of softened, unsalted butter, and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract until smooth and spread able. Stir in a bit of milk, if needed.
2- Use the icing to lightly frost eight ice cream sugar cones, then place them in the freezer for a few minutes until the icing hardens.
3- Now use tubes of cake-decorating icing to draw linear patterns and images and glue on decorative candies. For lodge poles, insert toothpicks into the tip of each cone.

(Recipes taken from FamilyFun.go.com)