Queen Kelley

The King’s family is somewhat unique in that his sister and brother-in-law and their three kids live in Burkina Faso, Africa. Rebecca and Keith minister there, educating, serving, and training the natives to teach others about God. The children know little different from all the beautiful brown faces they see (the middle child’s shock of blond hair is quite a contrast in photos!), the hot and dusty days, and the customs and behaviors that seem strange to untraveled Americans like me.

My nieces and nephew are a hoot. Via email, we receive photos of them enjoying mud puddles with their neighbors, covering themselves in diaper rash cream or stickers or lipstick, lounging in big buckets of water. They enjoy life to the fullest, and I for one admire how Rebecca has adapted her life to that of the Africans–learning how to live at a slower, less hectic pace; cooking meals from the barest of scratch; losing some of the typical mommy paranoia about what might taint our kids. Take this, for instance.

Merely thinking about this gives me the shivers, but it’s like Keith wrote, they sometimes have to accept approaches to life that we might not consider “normal.” Normal, in fact, is completely relative. Just ask the African children my in-laws nurture on a daily basis.