November 23, 2025
ANNOUNCEMENTS
No Worship on Wednesday, November 26th.
Order Poinsettia’s for Christmas! Deadline is Wednesday, December 3rd. Cost is $10 per plant. See attached form.
We are looking for items for the Spirit of Christmas Silent Auction! The Silent Auction is our main fundraiser for the Mission Trip to Denver, CO in June 2026 for our High School Youth! New items or craft items only please. Items should be at the church by Thursday, December 11th. Contact PB if you have questions.
Crew Wednesday, December 3rd, from 3:30-5:00pm, for all 3rd-6th graders!
Women of Trinity Christmas Gathering, Saturday, December 6th, 9 am
Sunday School Christmas Program Practices will be on Sunday, December 7th & 14th at 9 am till 11 am! PLEASE NOTE THE START TIME IS AT 9 AM!! Please have your child at both practices.
Men’s Band Christmas Concert at Knapp United Methodist Church, Saturday, December 6th at 7 pm.
Lagers with the Lord on Monday, December 15th, 6 pm at Buckshot’s.
Annual Mitten Tree is up! Bring in hats, mittens, scarves, and gloves to decorate the tree. We are also collecting items for the Coat Closet as well, like boots, snowpants, and winter coats, which you can put in the box by the Mitten Tree.
There is a new way to give at Trinity: Venmo! You can find us using: @TrinityLutheranBoyceville. If it asks you for a confirmation number, use 1349
MUSINGS FROM PASTOR BRAD
Thursday is, of course, Thanksgiving, and everyone has an opinion on Thanksgiving dinner, and I am no exception, and so I have decided to rank the items on a typical Thanksgiving spread. Now, this is a traditional Thanksgiving meal and I know that many people have all sorts of things on their table and some of these things are never included on MY table and some were barely included even when I was a kid. But when you think of Thanksgiving, you think of them overall.
Also, I am not including any desserts. Why? Well, for one, when you think of desserts at Thanksgiving you think of pies like pumpkin pie or pecan pie, both things I despise. And, if you do this meal right, you should be so full that dessert happens later and you don’t quite have room for pie. So I did not include pie on this list. Sue me. Also, I did not include condiments like gravy. Gravy is not a dish, it is a condiment. Again, sue me.
Here are the items I am doing to rank in my list you all are going to yell at me about just like you are yelling at me already about the dessert comments above. I have included nine items: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, corn, sweet potatoes, wild rice, cranberry sauce, dinner roll. Notice again, there is no salad. Take your salad home and leave it there. Ok, let’s get started from worst and going to first. I look forward to your feedback.
9: Cranberry Sauce: I don’t care if you make it fresh from real cranberry’s, or as I have heard from many people, the only way to have it is from the can where it looks like an alien made it, there might be no more disgusting thing that could hit my plate than this. I think I tried this once as a child, and then again as an adult just to see if my taste buds had changed. They hadn’t. Awful. Almost put this on Mission Madness this year and I’m sure it will make it in future years. Get it away and keep it away.
8: Sweet potatoes: Nothing sweet about these except that I don’t ever have to eat them. There was a moment, a small moment, where I didn’t mind a sweet potato fry. Really and truly. But I think I might have been suffering from a small moment of insanity or living in an alternative reality or it could be that almost anything can taste decent deep fried and full of salt. Not deep fried and full of salt? Awful. You can keep these weird, disgusting potato like things for yourself. My stomach has to keep room for the good stuff.
7. Turkey. UPSET ALERT! I know you are shocked. How could the centerpiece of a Thanksgiving table be so low on my list. I want you to know that the biggest debate I had with myself was whether this or the next item would go here. But let me spit some knowledge here: turkey sucks. It is the worst meat of all time. I would rather have any other meat on my Thanksgiving table other than turkey except for one thing: turkey is necessary for stuffing (we will get to that in a bit). I really, truly, only eat turkey at Thanksgiving and leftovers from Thanksgiving. You will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever see me choose it at any other time. I blame my Grandma Schmika (may she rest in peace) who cooked a bird so dry it could have been used to build buildings. Amy makes a lovely, moist bird every year. I eat a leg every year in memory of Mom, who always had a leg at Thanksgiving (we are dark meat people). But turkey sucks. Yet, it is extremely necessary for Thanksgiving and so we will continue to get between a 17 and 20 pound bird every year for just Amy and I.
6. Mashed Potatoes. AND THE CROWD THROWS KNIVES. The worst way to make a potato. Amy makes a very good version of this, full of creaminess and butter that I really like. But I would rather have my potatoes fried or baked or done a hundred different ways. My sisters loved me at Thanksgiving because I never took one drop of them. Just passed them by and they could have more (I had my eye on other things). Here is how you know how something is over rated: when you need to douse it in a ton of other stuff it to make it even to make it go down so that it doesn’t taste like Elmer’s glue (Amy’s doesn’t need hardly anything for that, which is why it is so good). And yes, I know what Elmer’s glue tastes like. I was a kid. I tasted it. And so did you.
5. Corn My Uncle Bob’s favorite vegetable (not), but one of mine, I do love corn. And it should be a little higher on here. As a kid, I would take a scoop of corn, though a dollop of butter in it, salt it like I was having popcorn, and go to town. Always reliable. Always good, even from a can. Got to love corn. We usually don’t have it on our table at Thanksgiving most years anymore but was something you could count on.
4. Dinner Roll There is nothing that saved young Brad Peterson’s stomach more than the dinner roll. Who doesn’t love a good dinner roll? Give me a King’s Hawaiian dinner roll any day (we use them for our leftover sandwiches post-Thanksgiving). When the Thanksgiving meal was especially bad at Grandma Schimka’s (I really did love my Grandma. She was super cool. Taught me how to play poker, gave me really nosy toys that annoyed my parents, but wasn’t always the best cook), I would just fill up on the reliable dinner roll). A hot dinner roll with butter just always does it. Bread never fails. Never. Even now, I can’t resist a good dinner roll in a buffet line. Have to grab it. And two pads of butter. Always two, one for each side.
3. Wild Rice I love wild rice. Love it. Uncle Ben’s please, if you do. No substitute. No other brand. Don’t serve me up those generics. Get the good stuff. The wild rice will be well represented on my plate. As much as I love it, we don’t eat a lot of it and so I appreciate it at Thanksgiving. I’m also a man who doesn’t like to mix my food. I like to keep my food separate from each other. But the wild rice can get it other things and I don’t mind. It does have a mind of its own and just naturally does where it will. It has a, well, a “wild” spirit if you will, and when it gets into something it shouldn’t, that’s ok. It melds easily into other things, never detracting and always enhancing. It’s a giver, an enhancer, that wild rice. Also always a reliable go to when I was a kid.
2: Green Bean Casserole My appreciation for this dish has only grown over the years because I don’t get it every year (Amy is NOT a fan. She dislikes both green beans and mushrooms). I think this year I may need to have her teach me how to make it (I understand it is easy to make, but I’m an idiot. Can idiot’s make it? I once failed at making a flourless chocolate cake). It has so much goodness, which the richness of the cream of mushroom soup (which I would never eat on its own), to the deliciousness of the green beans to the crunchy French fried onions on top. My Grandma Schmika did make a good one (see, I said something nice about her cooking!), and I have always loved it. We are having it this year and I can’t wait especially since I know I will have to eat it all. I can do that. I can easily do that.
1: Stuffing. In this list of my favorite foods of all time, Thanksgiving stuffing is probably in the top five. I wake up Thanksgiving morning immediately thinking of this. I can’t wait. There is nothing better than stuffing that comes from a turkey. The only reason to have a turkey is to stuff it. That’s it. I really could care less about the turkey on the it is a vessel for stuffing. I love stuffing so much I was admonished as a child for taking too much of it at probably every Thanksgiving. My justification was that I wasn’t really taking anything else so why couldn’t I have as much as I wanted? And really, if the Thanksgiving meal was just stuffing, I would be perfectly happy. I knew Amy’s Mom truly loved me because at Thanksgiving she would a bowl of stuffing in front of my plate and that BOWL WAS JUST FOR ME. MY OWN BOWL. I have never felt such love. Amy’s stuffing is the best I have ever had and every year I get to be the taste tester. We not only stuff the bird, we make a huge crockpot full of it, which is also good, but the stuff in the bird is magical. Magical, I tell you. Just takes you to another plane of existence. I almost cry every year. I love stuffing so much in college I once at it for every meal in a day. I love my stuffing full of sage and pepper (no sausage in mine, though I have had it that way and its not bad). Love it herby. Stuffing is the bomb and I give thanks to God every Thanksgiving for its existence. And I’m going to eat so, so, so, so, so much of it.
And there you have it. My definitive Thanksgiving meal rankings. I’m sure you have yours and maybe you have things on your table every year that are different. I hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and take a moment to give thanks to the Lord for the blessings of this life, for the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, and for, of course, stuffing! May God bless you this day and always!