Catherine, teammate, during “Bath & Laundry Hour”
at the Lord’s Boot Camp in Florida,
where the water is yellow and smells like sulfur, and your clothes never dry
Fill two 2-gallon buckets with water, throw a handful of laundry detergent powder in one, swish it around, and proceed to wash clothes. According to the TMI forum (and me), this is the best method. In goes the cleanest clothes first: socks, bras, underwear, bandanas (“clean” being a relative term).
some essentials: buckets, brush, bar soap, detergent powder
(Febreze is optional)
I wash them the way a machine does, agitating the articles of clothing until the water is dirtier than the clothes. Then I rinse, wring, and hang them up to dry. Returning to my setup of poncho, bucket line, and pile of dirty clothes, next I wash all the t-shirts. Finally, I beat as much dust out of my pants as I can, and then dunk them in the now-brown bucket of soapy water. After rinsing, I grab a partner to wring out excess water; we twist and pull until the pants are satisfactorily drier.
my teammate Zach washing his pants in China
Reaching into a bag of plastic blue clothespins, I hang all the clothes to dry in the zero-humidity air. After a few squirts of Febreze, I move on to the next activity, confident of finding fresh, clean-smelling, dry clothes a few hours later.
fresh, clean t-shirts—we all shared laundry implements so the clothespins here are not my blue plastic ones
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Teen Missions more often than I usually do, since it was one year ago that I was at Boot Camp, preparing to serve the Lord in China with my team. It seems I’m always thinking “What’s changed since one year ago?” and “What was I doing one year ago?” I hear it’s better to live in the present, but during the long, uneventful days of summer, it’s almost natural for my mind to wander down memory lane, or to ponder the future.
The pictures, the writing—I wrote this semi-expository record of Teen Missions laundry on August 2, 2010—all serve to remind me of what I’ve experienced. The first sixteen years of my life cause me to look forward to the rest: to adventures where everything from laundry to lip balm is exciting, where the work is hard and the sleep is good. The pens and calendar on my desk; the running shoes and watch on the floor; suggest to me what I could do and what I will do. The books and websites I’ve been reading present novel ideas and potential opportunities. Just a glance in my purse is exciting: cell phone; wallet with library card, check card, and driver’s permit; bracelet fliers. My junior year is just around the bend, and that means SATs and AP classes and applying for college. That alone gives me butterflies. But now, I am learning how to be, period. Or rather, I am learning, period.
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