Tyrell wanted me to tell him a bedtime story tonight.

I sighed – tonight?

OK:

There was a young girl who had a dream.  In her dream, something happened to her Bible.  She had just received that Bible just a week before for her 15^th birthday from a neighbor lady/friend.

When she awoke, she was not at home – she and her family had come to her grandpa’s house a few days earlier, and she had not brought the Bible along – but had left it at home, up on a high shelf, safe away.

The mosquitoes were bad – and she wanted to see if her Bible was where she’d left it.

She got permission from her mom to go home.  Her younger sister insisted on going with her and they started on the 3-hour walk home.  They started just before lunch time.  They walked through a creek.  They trudged through mud almost knee-deep.  They arrived home hot, dirty, and hungry.

But there was no food in the house.

They cleaned up a bit – and decided to go visit their friend.  The neighbor lady was pulling thorny weeds in her yard when they arrived.  Her young son came running out of the house crying when they arrived.  She held him a minute or two as he calmed down, they he went off to play again.

The friend opened the door in the security wall and invited the girls into the yard.  They wandered over a larger section of the lawn, pulling weeds and chatting as they went.

The older girl told the friend how happy she was at her birthday.  How delighted she was with the Bible.  How she was so blessed by the friend and another neighbor lady who had taken her shopping to buy new clothes for her birthday.

The next day was her sister’s birthday – how much would the friend charge for two birthday cakes?

What kind of cakes does this birthday girl want?

Plain vanilla.

Really?

OK… but there’s no way Mrs. Friend can charge those precious girls for a couple plain cakes.

Mrs. Friend gives them some fresh rolls, some oranges and a couple cans of sardines and sends them home.

Oh, and if their next-door neighbors aren’t home before the night comes, the girls should return to Mrs. Friend’s house so they don’t have to stay home alone overnight.

They borrow a pack of matches so they can light a fire.  They have no electricity in their home, no candles, no money to buy any to make light.  But they can build a fire.

The sun sets – night falls.

Mrs. Friend and her family are singing around the supper table when the doorbell rings.

The two girls are back.  They have bathed and are wearing clean clothes.  Mrs. Friend invites them in and they sit down to look through photo albums until bedtime.  Then Mrs. Friend disappears upstairs for a while.  She’s putting her young boy to bed, and fixing up a place for the girls to spend the night.

 A safe place where they don’t have to worry about the noises they hear during the night.

A safe place where they have light at the flip of a switch.

A bathroom without mosquitoes.

And drinkable water at the tap.

But most of all, a safe place to spend the night.

Sleep peacefully, my friends, sleep well.