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I'm sitting on a straw mat with a woman who insists I call her "sisi," the Zulu term for "sister." My family has been visiting her home in South Africa for two nights now, where there's not a single store-bought toy. Yet I've not heard a complaint.

My 1-year-old son scoops spoonfuls of water from an old tire filled with water for chickens and then dribbles it on the ground. All day long my 3-year-old daughter has climbed from fence to mulberry tree and back, plucking berries that have stained her face and hands purple. One of Sisi's daughters holds a basket of bottle caps collected over months or years and begins sorting them by color. Another child pushes a car made of clothes hangers and shoe-polish cans, then drops the car and chases a goat.

There's peace here. With no electricity, only sparse furnishings and a language I barely understand, this house clearly feels like "home."

My husband and I work in international development. For more than half our married life, we've lived overseas. Since conception, our daughter has lived in the United States, Nicaragua, China, Thailand and now South Africa. Our children have slept on hotel floors, restaurant tables, buses and in strangers' homes.

Only recently we moved into a house for the first time. It makes for some exciting stories, but I've also spent far too many hours worrying about whether I'm giving my children a "stable home." But then, what makes a home?

After seeing homes in a variety of cultures across the world, certain elements stand out to me in every house that's truly a home:

Home is where parents teach children. What and how they teach may differ, but children everywhere need to know that a mom's commitment never changes. Whether we're teaching how to hold a fork or chopsticks, home is where we make time for children.

In China, mothers and grandmothers start potty training babies from birth. I watched in awe at their commitment to holding their babies over a basin every 30 minutes. Dressed in pants with a generous split right through the middle, even 9-month-olds can squat politely over a basin when they have to go. I never had the guts to try this in my carpeted apartment, but it was fascinating nonetheless!

Home involves extended family. When we live far away from our extended family, we give our children photo albums of family members and tell stories about their lives. At the same time we find "adopted" family: friends of all ages who give our children the attention and unconditional love of a grandparent, aunt or uncle.

The old saying, "It takes a village to raise a child," took on new meaning in Nicaragua when I watched generations weaving together. A baby's day might include playing with corn cobs beside Grandfather, sipping coffee from the mug of an aunt (I wouldn't recommend it, but these coffee-growing Nicaraguans believed coffee was for anyone!) and napping in a hammock with an older brother. And in South Africa I've even known mothers to nurse their neighbors' children.

Home has routines and traditions. Even if we spend Christmas in a different climate each year, we look for common elements our children can hold onto as they grow. In our family, retelling stories of past holidays is a way to remember the real reason we celebrate. My daughter hears stories of the year she was a baby in China and we helped a few dozen Chinese people act out the Christmas story for the first time. Another year we slept in a barn in Nicaragua with people as poor as Mary and Joseph.

Whether it's the stories we tell, the pictures on the walls, Sunday-night pizza bakes or favorite books, families need some consistency. When it's dinner time at South African Sisi's house, her teenaged daughter plucks a chicken, lights a fire in the stove and cooks dinner with her mom. Sisi's 12-year-old daughter carries buckets of water on her head from the water hole nearby. There's no calendar here, no television, no swimming lessons and no "to-do" lists—still every family member knows who does what, when and why.

Home is where we know our identity. We had lived in South Africa just weeks when my daughter came home from a friend's house with a new accent. I stared at her in disbelief. At first I wanted to tell her to "talk normal," but as the accent stuck, I realized this wasn't the battle I needed to fight.

Another day she came home repeating a negative phrase she'd learned from a friend. I knew I had to draw a line. While I don't need to dictate every word my children speak, home must be a solid ground for learning values. Home is where I know who I am, and who God made me to be. Accepting that gives me courage to teach my children who they are anywhere in the world.

Christine Jeske and her husband, Adam, work with a microfinance organization in South Africa, and have two children, Phoebe and Zeke (www.jeskelife.org). She discovered MOPS through a book given by a friend in China, and has attended MOPS groups whenever possible ever since.

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