Welcome to Alta Woods Baptist Church

Thanksgiving services were common in the early days of settlement in America.  People recognized that only by the goodness of God were they going to survive and when he blessed them with a harvest that would sustain them, they thanked Him.  

For more than 150 years before our country became a nation, people were thanking God regularly, the first harvest feast being celebrated by the Pilgrims in Plymouth colony in 1621.  

President George Washington signed a proclamation celebrating Thanksgiving nationally.  

President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to be a federal holiday in 1863.

More recently President John Kennedy issued a proclamation in 1963 stating "Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving.  On the appointed day, they gave reverent thanks for their safety, for the health of their children, for the fertility of their fields, for the love which bound them together and for the faith which united them with their God."

Oh that our elected representatives today were bound together by love and united in their faith in Almighty God.

May we pray for that to become vital to our officials in Washington.