Heeding God’s call

I appreciate volunteers.  They are what puts both the love and the washing into Laundry Love.  I want to especially thank two volunteers who came out for the June Laundry Love event, but then found they couldn’t stay long because of the heat.

  The point isn’t that the heat got them.  Nor is the point that they tried to do something that was too much for them.  The point IS that they volunteered.

  So, thank you , Roy Randles and Sue Hensel. We have more summer months to go, and we want to care for our volunteers, too.  

  I know both Sue and Roy came to help because they have been Laundry Love volunteers many times.  That means not only have they leaned the steps of doing laundry at a laundromat, but more to the point they have felt in their hearts that this ministry is making a difference.

  Like the need to eat, the need to get cleaned up never goes away.  We will keep doing this, and we will welcome new volunteers.

More than clean clothes

We served the same number of people in June as we did in May.  Fourteen is much less than we were serving before the pandemic restrictions kept everyone home.

But fourteen is a number that allows for much more conversation, and finding out about people’s lives.  One man I talked to, well, mostly listened to, wanted to talk about his portable house and about what he had recently done with it, and his next planned improvement.   Another man wanted to talk about an experience he had had the day before  that had disturbed him.  He realized he really needed to think it through, out loud, in order to process all the feelings that had in one day built up inside him. A third man was incredibly happy when our volunteers said we should help with his laundry even though he arrived after our stop time.  He just never stopped being happy the rest of the evening, and his happiness brightened everybody else up!

Some of our other volunteers found ways to help with other immediate needs of the people coming for Laundry Love.  That night, one volunteer bought a set of sheets for  a man who needed them.  He went home with his clean laundry, copied over a poem of praise to God he had previously written, and came back to give it to her.  Another volunteer bought something as simple as a steel bowl, to give one woman so she could wash a few things for herself where she lived.

All this happened because we had fewer people all at once, and so had more time to listen to people. We had more time to think about their needs and something original we could do to help.

I didn’t get to talk with my friends from church who were volunteering that night very much, but still, I really enjoyed our June Laundry Love event.