The church I grew up in gave more money to foreign missions than any church in the United States. My father was a pastor for that church, so we had connections with people from all over the world here in Indiana.

During Thanksgiving and Christmas, my mother would make dinner for way more people than our family had, because we just never knew who might show up, from where they came, or what they had been through. We had families over from Lebanon, Laos, the Congo, and many others. But the point always was that we were all equals at the table. For a brief moment, we were one family sharing gratitude, heartache, joy, and most of all, delicious food.