Almost every November for 30 years I would leave my family and take a group of students to Boston for a Christian conference and sight-seeing while staying with host families over the Thanksgiving holiday. Barb and the boys would spend Thanksgiving with her mom. But one year was very different.

 

One year our sons were studying about Colonial America in their home schooling. A local friend who also home-schooled her kids happened to mention to Barb that her mother volunteered in the public library of a town near Plymouth, Massachusetts, that the library kept free tickets to tour Plymouth Plantation (a replica of the Pilgrims’ village, with people acting the roles of actual early settlers) and also tour the replica of the Mayflower ship, and she could arrange for us to use the free tickets if we would ever travel there. A few days later, as I was talking with the Conference coordinator and making plans for the trip, he happened to mention that, if I ever wanted to bring my family along to the Conference, he could arrange for us to stay at the home of a family that would be away over Thanksgiving but who would offer their home for Staff and their family to use.

 

So it was that our whole family went to Boston that year. It was arranged for us to stay in the huge house of a wealthy part-owner of the Boston Celtics basketball team, a house complete with a BIG TV and all kinds of games that our kids thoroughly enjoyed.

 

The Conference that year was being held at a church nearby, in the New Hampshire area north of Boston. On Thanksgiving Day, while the students were all visiting with their Host Families, we Saxtons drove to Plymouth, south of Boston, to dramatically learn about the life of those Pilgrims of long ago.

 

We also got some first-hand experience of being ‘pilgrims’, ourselves. On the long drive from Plymouth to our host home in New Hampshire we kept looking for a place where we could have Thanksgiving dinner. We finally stopped at the only restaurant we found to be open that day–Taco Bell! (When we thanked the Taco Bell’s Manager for being open he said he was new in his job and thought they would have lots of business on Thanksgiving Day, but we were about the only ones who came there, so he planned to close as soon as we left!)