Cleaning Houses

On the second Thursday or so of our time in Portstewart, we ate breakfast, grabbed sandwiches for lunch and headed out in discipleship groups. In talking with my girls, my incredible love for cleaning bathrooms was shot down by four the four of them that were less than passionate about such things. We ended up at the pound store buying paper towels and gloves then the "Drugist" or the town's drug store to buy multipurpose cleaner,window cleaner and antibacterial toilet cleaning wipes. This was to be our servant evangelism day! The goal, should we choose to accept it...to show God's love in tangible ways to the people of Portstewart.

As we started asking people if we could clean their homes for free, we found many less than trusting or simply not home. By the end of a block we found two families to clean for so clean we did. One vacationing family simply had us clean the outside of their windows along the front of the place they were staying and spent the entire time laughing from disbelief. They didn't know what to do with the idea of us cleaning for them...and for free. It was fun. The second house we got to clean along that way had three girls showering at the moment, but asked if we would be able to return in an hour or so. We found ourself in a bathroom, and shortly after we started we had it spic and span. We left, inviting the girls that were now clean and fresh to our movie night at the church hall in a night or two.

With so few people around and willing to let us into their vacation homes, I asked the British Telephone employee where we might find more people and he pointed us to the pensioners housing about a block away. It was there we found Marion and her son. It was Marion's birthday. I think she had just turned 78 and she was so blessed by our presence. We had just cleaned for her neighbor, Eddie and asked if there was anyone he knew that might appreciate our help. He told us Marion, his neighbor liked girls and that we might head on over.

We knocked on the open door. No one came to us, but the man in the front room replied. With undisdinguishable and loud mumblings he kept saying what sounded like "Momma." As it turned out, she did not come and he couldn't come so I slowly and timidly walked in the door and found a severely paralized man sitting in a wheel chair with a huge smile. After somewhat unsuccessful communication, I headed down the hall and found his wonderful mother, Marion. I explained our offer to her and she asked us to vacuume for her because she wasn't able to do so very well. At the same time that Laura vacuumed for her, Keljo took care of the Kitchen and weeding the back yard, I wiped down the walls and Elise attacked the bathroom (I think). Bethany, who really wasn't feeling well, was the official paper towel dispenser. She did her job well, as did the others. All the while, Marion's son could be heard in the background calling out our names, "Laura, Eeleeeese, Keljjjo, Be-thany, Amy" He did the best saying Laura's name. In no time we had cleaned the little this woman needed done and we started visiting with her. She told us it was her birthday and how she had been drinking last night and feeling lonely, thinking about death, but when she woke up this morning she knew God's mercies were new with the dawning of the new day and we came and it was her birthday!! She told us about some of the mischief she caused when she was our age, told us of being a vegetarian (her son was in the background saying "Meat! Yuck!"), talked with us about her fears about death and told us that we would all be very good housewives someday! Marion was a feisty, sweet and refreshing woman to get to love for God! She even asked us to pray for her before we left. We did and we headed out the door onto the rest of our servant evangelism day and to loving more people, for God in tangible ways.