Maura's Birthday Party

Maura decided she wanted to have a little celebration for her birthday.  She thought it would be nice to bake a cake and invite the neighbors over to share in celebrating her first birthday in Cameroon.  I never stop Maura from baking anything.   Her actual birthday fell on a Wednesday so we decided it would be best to have people over the following Saturday evening.  We had a long week with the first week of homeschool, our anniversary, her birthday and life in Africa.  Friday night we had a late night from going out to a Bible study with other missionaries and Saturday we had no electricity.  At about  4:00 on Saturday, Maura and I looked at each other and said “what were we thinking having people over tonight, it would be much more enjoyable to just have a family night.”  Oh well, we already had invited people and told the kids. 

Maura worked hard to create one of her delicious baked goodies-carrot cake.  The kids asked every 5 minutes if they could tell the neighbors it was cake time.  Finally, after we ate our dinner the cake finished baking and the kids were free to spread the news.  They ran to one neighbor to share the news and immediately came home to see if they could tell the next.  In no time we had all three of our neighbors in our living room.  The kids served the cake to each person making sure all the guests were served first before they dug into their cake.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the cake because with our family there were eleven people eating in silence with the occasional nervous laugh.  As I ate my cake and tried to start conversations I was thinking this will be a quick party because our guests will be bored and want to go home.  What was I to do?  I felt stumped on how to entertain our guests as they sat in silence.

Fortunately we have an entertainment system that involves our 3 children.  Patrick continued to do silly things like eat cake off the ground to make all of us giggle.  As he kept our attention for awhile Honora came to me with a secret request.  She whispered in my ear “Dad, can I get a card game out to play?”  I agreed and was curious where this would go.  She choose to play Uno and invited the whole party to play.  None of our guests had played Uno before so we had to explain the rules and everyone decided to play.  In no time, the awkward silence no longer existed, we were all talking and laughing while playing the game.  It was one of those moments that I forgot I was in Africa.  We enjoyed each others company and truly had a good time with one another.

At one point I looked up and realized again this is what mission work is about, relationships and sharing in the journey of life.  I watched Honora as she was delighted to sit on one neighbor’s lap and share his cards with him.  Patrick ran around playing peek-a-boo with a couple of the other neighbors.  Clare Rose served everyone popcorn as she shoved it into her own mouth.  The experience made me smile at how natural this seemed to my three children to be playing cards with a room full of people from Cameroon.  Then to watch as how our guests showed genuine care and compassion for our children was even more moving.  I did not expect them not to care about the kids but they treat my children as their own.  I could not ask for anything else from these new companions in our lives.  The evening shaped out to be a familiar site.  It was as if we were in the States at a party with our family and our kids were playing with their aunts, uncles and cousins. 

The time came for us to have the kids go to bed and we were sorry to tell our neighbors.  We finished up the last game of Uno and said our good-byes.  After we had all 3 kids in bed Maura and I looked at each other and said “that was a perfect evening of fun and celebration.”  Then the doorbell rang.  We sent cake home for one of the neighbors that was unable to come and she wanted to let us know she was home and already ate the cake.  Of course, she raved about how delicious it was as all the other guests did too.  We have had many moments on mission of uncomfortableness or uncertainty of what we should do but somehow we fumble our way through them and they usually are the most rewarding experiences (or humorous).

-Ryan