So many reasons to be thankful*

Happy Thanksgiving! [I hope and pray you have a blessed, meaningful, and enjoyable Thanksgiving with your family and friends.]

[Here’s my Thanksgiving prayer: Almighty and loving God, I have a lot to be thankful for. First, I thank you for all the bountiful blessings and harvests you’ve showered us. Thank you for our dear families and friends, near or far, being together in these trying times. Thank you for the settlers that brought us life and freedom. Thank you for our government officials, who have worked for the greatness of America. Thank you to our new and re-elected leaders. And to our newly-elected president and vice-president, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, respectively, I thank you, and hope and pray that you’ll do your best to make America great again, and to help make the world a safer, peaceful place to live in.

Thank you, Lord, for our religious leaders for increasing and strengthening our faith.Thank you for our teachers and volunteers, our innovators and pioneers, our nurses, doctors and other caregivers, our police officers, our dedicated and hard-working farmers for all their contributions and efforts in making America a strong and great nation. Thank you for our journalists and social media professionals for informing us of what’s happening around the world. Thank you for our actors and singers, and writers and athletes for entertaining us and reminding us that, despite what’s going on in our country and around the world, we can still manage to celebrate our humanity.

Thank you, Lord, for all our Armed Forces, our servicemen and women who are here and abroad, fighting for freedom and peace, and also for their families and the sacrifice they make. I pray, Almighty God, that the homeless and the unemployed and marginalized will find shelter and comfort and employment.May your light and love shine before us all!. Amen.]

Let me tell you, I feel so blessed to be in America.I can’t thank her enough for what she’s done for my family and me.

I sure did realize my dream here, joining the U.S. Navy, becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1989, and retiring in 2005, after 20 years of honorable service to my adopted country.

So on this Thanksgiving Day, I sincerely thank you, America, for helping me realize the American Dream. I thank you for this wonderful, incredible freedom and democracy that my family and I cherish and enjoy.

As an American of Filipino ancestry, I proudly say how much I love this country where my two young adult children, Andrew and Tintin,  were born to my caring and loving wife, Freny, who has been teaching chemistry to our public high school students for almost two decades now. [Andrew’s an IT instructor for a non-profit organization and theatre actor based in DC, teaching computer skills to the underserved population there while Tintin's a school counselor working in one of the public middle schools in our state.]

Together with my younger siblings, who legally immigrated here, I had my first Thanksgiving Day in the United States 33 years ago at my sister Betty’s house in California.

Although I didn’t know much then about this traditional American celebration, I had a good time, because we had that big family Thanksgiving with lots of food and love. Man, that was the first and the biggest turkey I’ve ever seen in my entire life!

On a personal note, I’d like to express my profound gratitude to my sister Betty for being the most caring and loving Big Sister that she is. She made it possible for me and our younger siblings to legally immigrate here in 1983, and she became our second mother once we arrived.

I’ll be forever indebted and eternally grateful to her and my brother-in-law Dennis for their kindness and generosity.

May God bless our beautiful and colorful America! Again, wishing you all a blessed, happy and safe Thanksgiving!

-Chris A. Quilpa, a retired U.S. Navy veteran, lives in Suffolk. Email him at chris.a.quilpa@gmail.com.

*Appeared in the Opinion page of the award-winning Suffolk News-Herald, Thursday, November 24, 2016. For more information, visit www.suffolknewsherald.com.

NOTE: This is the original article submitted to the above-mentioned publication. However, because of space limitation, portions of the article, the ones with bracket signs [...] were not included in the final publication of the article.Thanks, everyone, for reading it.Do appreciate it.