A new home calls for learning new things.
Like how to deal with no running water for over two months, how to wash my hair in a basin and wash my clothes by hand, and how winning a bargain deal with a boda driver is a big accomplishment, so big that a high-five to myself is needed when it happens. Learning how to cross the street successfully has taken a while to master. Imagine this – a mother load of cars zooming back and forth (except they drive on the opposite side of the road, that alone confused my brain), boda bodas showing up out of nowhere behind cars, taxis randomly stopping on the sides and even right in the middle of the road, all the while honking is going on everywhere and your brain starts having a mini panic attack, throw in some random cows crossing the street and you have a crazy mess you somehow have to walk through. Boda rides have taught me that mzungu hair has no chance against any sort of wind, even just a breeze. It’s more like I have to own the “I just woke up with my hair like this, and messy is the new style, isn’t it cute?” look. I can successfully cook matooke, beans, sweet potatoes, cabbage, Irish potatoes, and fried rice but it’s got nothing on a real Ugandan mama’s cooking. I’m working on becoming a Ugandan-food-cooking-soon-to-be-wife (74 days to be exact!). I’m slowly learning the native language, Luganda, but it’s a long (did I mention slow?) work in progress.
Eight months at my new home away from home has also taught me what it means to be homesick. And being homesick has taught me what it means to appreciate the family I have in small town, Ohio. Today I wrote a short letter for the annual Yoder camping trip about 21 years of memories made camping with my big Yoder family in a mosquito infested campground. These are some of the memories that came flooding back,
“When you think of camping with family, and more specifically all 50 of the loud and weird Yoder’s (you have to admit, we are all a little weird, but the good kind of weird), you either hate it or you love it. I am one of those people who love it and have loved it for all of my twenty one years. I remember nights of sitting around a big campfire under a clear, star-filled sky, roasting hotdogs and marshmallows. When I say a big fire, I actually mean a hugely-enormous-should-be-illegal fire, Yoder’s sure know how to make a fire. It always seems like there is something new to be made on the campfire every year, Esther’s now famous donuts being one of them. I think of singing hymns, all voices raised together in perfect harmony, ending in a prayer that is followed by Uncle Jake singing “Amen, Amen, Amen…”, which brings me to the memory of Uncle Jake stuffing thirty marshmallows in his mouth at once, always the life of the party. The funny, crazy Uncle that every family needs. I remember days of playing softball and thinking I was cool for playing with the “big guys” while secretly wishing the ball wouldn’t come flying in my face. Always eating meals so big and delicious that you feel like your stomach is going to burst, and at the end of the weekend you are convinced you have gained about 20 pounds. I remember simple and funny things, but things that have made an imprint in my heart over the years; calling up Alli and Jenni when we were little to make sure they would bring their baby dolls so we could play, Dad cooking up some gross raccoon they killed the night before and then having some weird desire to eat it, chewing pieces of double-bubble gum and blowing bubbles the size of our heads, Robert giving us rides down the hill in the little red wagon, washing Steve’s hair with dish soap (I’m pretty sure he was real mad at us but was too nice to show it), water balloon fights, volleyball games, rib cook-offs, holding new babies that have just joined the family, bumming in a lawn chair with a soda in one hand and a bag of chips in the other for hours just because you know you can, Uncle Earl sharing the gospel on Sunday mornings, puppet shows, Doddy surprising you with a witty joke every now and then, and lots of mosquito bites. Oh and laughter, lots and lots of laughter. Memories being remembered, shared, and made. Reunion.”
There are countless memories that I could share with you about both sides of my big and loud families, but that would take pages and I am sure you don’t want to listen to me stroll through memory lane. Growing up in two huge Christ-centered families has shown me examples of grace and forgiveness being given and received over and over again, and what that looks like when it is started at the very beginning of it all, from the grandparents. My prayer is that one day, my kids will grow up and look back on years of memories and be able to say the same things about their family and instill that into their own children. I want my kids to be the ones who say “I L O V E my family gatherings” instead of the ones who dread going. There is something so beautiful about families who stick together, love each other, pray for each other and fight for one another in Christ.
My prayer is that one day I will sit with Silvester, wrinkled by years of life, and look out and see a family full of Christ-like love and grace, forgiveness, humility, and unity. One that sticks together through the hardships and one that’s full of a thousand memories.
