Con-solatio Alumni Thanksgiving 2025

By Andie Tong, Missionary Staff Member

The turkey was carved, dishes were set, and each person had their place at the table. This year’s thanksgiving dinner began with Mara’s commemorative reading of Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of Thanksgiving Day. In 1864, he set apart the last Thursday of November as a day for Americans to offer praise and thanksgiving “to the Great Disposer of Events.” What a beautiful reminder that it’s God’s hands that have arranged all that lay before us. 

We went around the table, full of family, Con-solatio alumni, and friends old and new, and shared one thing we are grateful for. One of our new friends Evelyn shared, “I’m grateful to have met Con-solatio, and to be a recipient of their radical availability to God.” I was deeply moved because often, when I am working from home, this availability that has been entrusted to me seems all too quiet, somehow inhibited by my computer screen. Yet being available to my work and to my friends are united by the reality that they are both blessings given by the Great Disposer of Events.

We continued around the table, and I was struck by the sense that we were all simply relishing in each other’s presence. It might have been Mara’s cranberry relish (a Wickett family special), but there was something particularly special about sharing Thanksgiving with a handful of Con-solatio alumni. I’m grateful for how they nourish and make present the ways our mission continues to shape my heart and my life wherever I am.