“I like your eyes. I like your nose. I like your ears, your hands, your feet, your toes…”
MY GIRL and I sang a lullaby to 30-plus children at a small school we visited in a minority village last week. Our group briefly stopped at the school on our way to visit a friend at the top of a mountain. The 45 minute ride back and forth across the side of the mountain was painfully bumpy every second on that unpaved road. (The view was nice. We were surrounded by apple trees and encountered a random farm animal along the way. The people in the same van as me made a game of trying to guess what kind of animal it was…yak? cow? donkey? horse? mule?)
Once we reached the school, one of the team leaders called me over to teach a class of 4th graders. I hadn’t prepared anything or even been aware that I would have this opportunity! Oh, well…
Very quickly, I made the decision to teach them the parts of the body that were in this lullaby that my friend MY GIRL sings. It is a song from her childhood, but the message is so powerful; it makes me cry every time I hear it!
For most of the vocabulary, I could point to the part of my face or body that I was saying, but the word “toes” was a little difficult to explain with my shoes on, so I took off my shoes and socks and showed them my toes! It felt a little uncomfortable, but it worked!
“In all of the world, in every town, you could look both up and down, but you will never find- it’s true- another one like you!” MY GIRL and I finished the song and told the students that they were made special, each one of them!
Some of the local people from the city where I live who have been growing up in the faith joined us on this trip to the minority village for the purpose of gaining a heart for “missions.” One of the girls who has just found a job as a teacher’s aid in a primary school classroom said she cried when she heard the song. “I think these kids are lucky,” she said. “I never had anyone tell me I was special when I was growing up.”
There are so many opportunities to make a HUGE impact on the lives of these people!