When I think of putting a child to bed, I think soft and cuddly thoughts. These thoughts consist of squishy pillows, soft blankets, soft kisses, generally anything soft.
Last summer, my daughter and I spent several weeks in Hyderabad, India serving at Back2Back’s India campus. When we visited a children’s home that Back2Back India serves, one of the first things the kids did was excitedly show us their rooms. Their rooms consisted of beds, pushed together in one platform, made of plywood, set up off the ground. When the mission trip group members saw this, they were moved to act. They started asking if there was any way they could purchase mattresses for the children in this home. A national that works with Back2Back got right on the task.
When we went back out to the same home for the second day, a load of small mattresses arrived. The kids were ecstatic. As the group members carried those little mattresses upstairs, the kids could hardly wait to see. We laid the mattresses on the boards and the kids promptly started lying and jumping on them. It was a joyous moment.
What a great way to see a need and meet a need! We walked away knowing that maybe this would be the first time that these kids associated sleep with softness. It gave us all sweet dreams.
