Watch the reunion in the video below.

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Do you remember the first time you ever went to school and were separated from your parents for the first time? Most kids in that situation end up crying and chances are, you had your share of tears as well. We all got used to it after a while but it does demonstrate how instinctively connected we are to one’s family.

While most kids in the US tend to move out of their parents’ home once they get to college, at least the family still manages to get together during holidays such as Thanksgiving. But in more impoverished countries, people often have to leave their families, sometimes at great risk to themselves, just in order to work at a decently-paying job that will allow them to send money home and hopefully lift their families to a better life.

Behind the facade of those Facebook and Instagram pictures that show smiling faces in foreign locales, these workers often feel the pain and homesickness that such a separation brings. But despite being unbearable, they keep soldiering on because that’s what their family needs.

Military families probably understand this sense of separation the most as their loved ones get deployed for months or even years at a time.

And it’s not as if these workers don’t want to go home to visit their families. More often than not, they send most of their paycheck back home so they aren’t able to save enough beyond their basic needs. It hurts even more if the family is ungrateful or makes unreasonable demands of the family member who is sweating blood and tears just to provide for them.

Which is why it’s so heartening to see videos like this of a man who spent seven years away from his home country of Nigeria but is finally able to come home. The love and welcome showed by his sister in the video definitely make the sacrifice of being away from them for so long worth it.

Seven years is a long time. Enough for a toddler to become a teenager or for that scrawny sibling you last recall seeing to graduate from college. There’s always a danger of taking our families for granted but this video reminds us that they should be cherished while we have a chance to be with them.