Lala Salama (Sleep Well)

Lala Salama
Originally uploaded by Kierra Higgins.

Tonight I got to read to the children before they went to bed. I was so blessed by the entire experience and will never forget this night. I entered the first girls’ hut (home to 12 girls) and found a few small ones already asleep in their beds. The rest were working on their homework at the table. They were so excited to see me and showered me with hugs. I brought in some books that the American teams had sent and told them they could pick one for me to read. They picked “The Bernstein’s Bears and the Messy Room.”

I began to read to them, stopping to explain all the words they didn’t understand. At first, it was just words like basement – they have never heard of a basement before and thought it was so funny that you would have a room under the ground. But then I got a bit more concerned as I had to explain things like “model dinosaurs,” “race car collections,” and a bunch of other toys. These kids have never had toys before, and now maybe each have one “toy” to call their own. My heart began to hurt as I read them a story about this messy room with all these hundreds of toys cluttering the floor. At one point, Mama Bear opens the closet door and she gets covered in all the falling toys that were jammed into it. This isn’t right, I just kept thinking. Children in America shouldn’t have this many toys, and these orphans in Kenya shouldn’t be hearing this story. I skipped over much of the rest of the story, trying to finish it as fast as possible. The solution at the end was that Papa Bear built them a toy box to store all their toys in, and they had to organize all the toys in the closet (the closet was still full to the brim mind you, they were just organized in boxes now instead of falling all over the place). I suppose it had a good lesson for kids to keep their rooms clean, but these children already know this lesson well. They amaze me. They clean their room and the whole Children’s Home every day. They each have their own cleaning chores and they happily attend to them every day. I never hear any child complaining or arguing about any of it. I was embarrassed to read to them about Brother and Sister Bear fighting over who had to clean up and who’s mess it was. These children would never dream of creating a scene like that. I told them at the end that I think we need to write our own children’s book with them as the main characters and then I can take it to America and read it to the children there who do not know how to clean their rooms very well. The children laughed and said they would like to be in a book. Maybe I’ll write one someday.

After the story, they all kept telling me, “Thank you so much.” They all hugged me and told me they loved me so much. I told them, “Lala Salama” (sleep well), and they kept saying it back to me. They told me to sleep well and have sweet dreams. I wished them sweet dreams as well. One girl told me that she never used to have sweet dreams – she only had bad ones (which I’m sure are from her traumatic past). But now that she’s been at the Children’s Home for over a year, the bad dreams have left and she only has sweet ones. Praise God!

As I tucked the little ones into bed, they each told me they would be praying for me. I told them I would pray for them too. I asked them how I could pray for them, and their answers blew me away. Their first answer was for me to pray for their parents (their new parents who they received when they came to our Children’s Home). Next, they asked me to pray for the children who were sick in the Home. Third, they wanted me to pray for the children in Sudan. They looked at some pictures from Sudan earlier this week and saw that those children had no food or clothes, so they are really praying for them. Fourth, they asked me to pray for their sponsors in America. Fifth they said to pray for the teams and interns who will be coming to Kenya this summer. Finally, I asked them, “Yes, but how can I pray for YOU?” They said to pray for their education that they would continue to learn a lot and do well in school.

Wow, I couldn’t believe how many people they asked me to pray for before they even thought of themselves. More than ever, I am understanding Jesus’ words, “Unless you humble yourselves and become like a little child, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Lord, teach me to be like these little children! Thank you for the lessons they taught me tonight and the way they blessed me.