By Nicole Steele Wooldridge ‘07

“Come in—you are most welcome here!”

With a dazzling, ebullient smile, my Ugandan host mum beckoned me into the family’s home for the first time. What I didn’t know in that moment was that she was also ushering me into an entirely new chapter of my faith journey—a chapter inspired by the transcendent joy imbued in her remarkable smile.

It was the summer between my junior and senior years at Notre Dame. Part of my internship with a development organization in Mbale, Uganda involved living with a local family. Just days before I was supposed to move in, arrangements with the household where I’d originally been placed had fallen through. This new family, having never before met me or even hosted a foreigner, scrambled to accommodate me.

When I showed up at their door, they rejoiced as though they had been waiting for me all their lives. They welcomed me into their home with songs of gratitude and elation, not because of who I was or what I’d done, but because, quite simply, it’s what they thought Jesus would do.

It was the first of many lessons about radical hospitality and authentic Christian joy I would learn from them.

In the months I lived with my Ugandan family, I prayed with them, danced with them, and fell in love with them. Their eagerness to share their life with me was all the more extraordinary because of how hard they worked—and continue to work—to achieve that life.

My host dad’s biography almost seems too inspiring to be true (but it is): he grew up in a traditional clay house nestled within a small subsistence-farming village. A self-described “naive village boy,” he was 8 years old before he saw an electrical light bulb (and the story of his first encounter with a toilet would have you in stitches). During secondary school, he walked 14 miles every day to attend class; as the top-performing student in his district, he earned a scholarship to attend university in Uganda’s capital. From there, he was recruited for a prestigious post-graduate program in Ireland, and he is now a professor at the local university in Mbale.

He and my host mum (his boss at the university, as he’d be the first to tell you with pride) are a force of wisdom, intellect, and tireless work. With their credentials and connections, they would have no problem establishing an easier, more convenient life in a Western country. But they have no interest in doing so.

They made the choice to remain in Uganda and put their skills to use in service of their people. That choice is fraught with daily sacrifices—sacrifices that probably would have overwhelmed me long ago. But for my host family, the trials of life in Uganda can do nothing to diminish their sense of fulfillment in doing their work, or their sense of delight in knowing, truly knowing, they are loved by God as they do it.

It’s why, in a country where many lack a warm meal or a safe place to sleep, their house is always full. It’s why, despite having the opportunity to establish a consistent source of electricity for their home, they chose instead to pay school fees for half a dozen children. And it’s why, in the face of poverty so abject as to be dehumanizing, they are overjoyed to respond with generosity so self-sacrificing as to be miraculous.

Of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, hope was always somewhat nebulous to me. What does it mean to hope, and how is that different from having faith? I had read the Catechism’s description: “The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man … Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity” (CCC 1818). But it wasn’t until I experienced life with my Ugandan family that I understood just what it looks like to dwell in the joy of belonging to the Lord.

It looks like the luminous smile my host mum offered me the first time she welcomed me home.

When I am asked to describe my host family, the first word to come to mind is always “joyful.” But words really cannot do justice to the sheer jubilation that is infused in my Ugandan family. They are radiant with it. It is palpable, contagious. It is, quite frankly, exactly the sort of thing that can change the world.

It has certainly changed me.

This post is adapted from a blog series originally published by Messy Jesus Business.