"Here it is December, and Thanksgiving Day..."

Dear Christian Friend,

Here it is December, and Thanksgiving Day is past. We thank the Lord for His many blessings, and we thank you for your love offerings and donations, often made with considerable sacrifice so that you can help others in foreign lands who are often in need both materially and spiritually. We also appreciate your prayers so that we can have God's power and guidance in helping them both materially and spiritually.

I thank the Lord that He had arranged my situation so that even without eyesight I can be useful and still find life and work interesting. Thanksgiving Day I went out to the Christian Children's Home and Orphanage, taking some supplies and getting a list of clothing to have in time for their Christmas so that each child will have some new clothes, and also that those who are going to school will have the notebooks, tablets, and pencils they need. The school here is on vacation and will be opening again in January.

After the children had been put to bed, the Americans on the staff there got together for a Gringo American Thanksgiving hour or so together. There are quite a few of them, volunteers who have come down as nurses, workers, and preachers, helping with the children and also in various other Gospel evangelistic projects.

I brought the message and said, "I am going to talk to you about the Pilgrims, but don't be bored. There are some important points that the modern history books don't tell you, and which are more important than the pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce we are going to serve."

"You were taught that the Pilgrims came fleeing religious persecution, but that is only part of the story. It is true there was great persecution in some parts with the Catholic Church, burning thousands and tens of thousands at the stake if they did not recant and declare their faith in the Roman Church instead of that Bible idea of personal Salvation through personal faith in the Saviour. This was particularly cruel in France, and those who could escape made it to Georgia and other parts. Others went first to Holland and then to South Africa. We should remember them now in our prayers, for the Communists and the atheistic liberals hate the Boers for their active faith. Some from various parts of Europe fled to England where the physical persecutions were not so intense but the spiritual immoral influence they felt was even more dangerous. 'What will it profit us,' they felt and said and preached, 'if we save our lives, but lose our children and grandchildren in this present "Sodom" with its form of religions, but actually permissiveness and immorality.' Those dissenters were known as Puritans for their strict standards. Now, you can hardly believe that those decent people who suffered to give us, their children, a Christian land are made fun of openly in the liberal press and liberal political circles. They use Puritan as a term of scorn and reproach.

"The first group got out with so little money and resources that they could only charter a little old tub called the 'Mayflower.' About 130 souls were on that boat. They were not acquainted with that climate, nor the best forms of planting. Their clothes and housing were woefully inadequate, and during that first winter nearly one half of them died. In the spring the boat came again, and some suggested that those who felt it was too severe could return. What did they reply? Mothers who had lost children and fathers who had lost both wife and children, young and old, replied that none would go back. 'Better it is for ourselves and little ones to perish here than to go back and lose our souls.'

"When you young mothers think of making such a decision, you gain a new love and respect for the old USA. You realize the enormity of evil policies of later people with no respect for God or morals to come in only for material gain. They bring immoral changes and laws: forbidding prayer in the schools; free love and other perversions abounding, abortions, drugs, and more; all tending to push out the children of the Pilgrims, the moral Bible people who suffered and died, giving their lives for us and this our land."

I got all choked up and could not go on for a bit, but someone also tried to and they were also in tears. We sang "God Bless America" and should sing more. God has blessed America in a way He has no other country because those early Christian Pilgrims paid the price and obeyed His Word even unto death.

We have much to be thankful for. We also have a great responsibility. Let us be faithful in getting out the Gospel so that the blessing of God will hold back the four winds of tribulation that are destined to blow over every "Sodom." Thank God there are still many wholehearted Christians who have not bowed their knee to Baal and the other modern idols.

Orland Wolfram