Part A - Share about your family’s laundry. Where is it kept? Who does it? How does your family sort it? Do you wash by hand? Hang clothes on the clothesline? Make your own laundry soap? How often do you do laundry? How many loads each day/week? Indoor laundry room, in the garage, or laundry mat? Even more fun…share a picture!
Our dirty clothes are put in hampers in our rooms until it's time to wash. The boys are pretty good about putting dirty clothes in the hamper although Liam is still learning in this area. But with good examples from his bigger brothers is starting to catch on! Every Monday it's Dane's job to sort out their dirty clothes in their room into piles of dark clothes, pants (which are almost all darK), lights and whites (mainly socks! The boys use so many socks!!) When I'm ready I ask Arel to bring one of the piles down to the washing machine which is located in our little laundry area just outside the kitchen door. I just start washing and if I don't finish it all that day I keep going the next day and try to have most things washed by the end of Friday so we can take a break from it for Sat and Sun.
I finally just got a nice plastic cover to protect the washer from dirt and rain (you might be able to see it bunched up behind the lid there). Before I just used a cloth covering I had made for it. Eventually in our new house we'll have an actual indoor laundry room. Right next to it is the big cement utility sink that all Peruvian homes seem to have. The sink itself is actually twice as big as the part you see in the picture, and the right side of it is slanted in making a built in washboard area. I really like having a utility sink and can't imagine life without one now! Right above the washer is my laundry soap and cleaning products cupboard. We use regular laundry soap called ACE I am pretty sure it's the same thing as Tide. It looks like the Tide package anyway. I am partial to the Aloe Vera scent! :)
We do not have a dryer so all the clothes get hung outside on lines in our tiny back yard. Many families in Peru use their roof to have their clotheslines and eventually we'll do that too. It saves space in the yards since we don't get much of a yard. Here's Heidi and our cat enjoying the grass and the sheets and blankets blowing above them.
And another little monster
I mean HELPER joined me to supervise as I hung up his blankets.
Lately we've been getting rain almost every afternoon so I've been washing most days and getting the laundry hung so it's dry or mostly dry by the time it might start to rain around 4-8pm. When I have to bring them in we drape the clothes around the dining room chairs to finish drying through the night.During the dry season I can leave the clothes out on the line all night and there's no rain. So about half the year drying is less labor intensive. :)
I am usually the one to fold since it goes fast for me and I leave the boys clothes in piles for them to take to their rooms and put away. However they are all three good about folding their own clothes too. If I fold clothes on my bed and Heidi finds me she likes to find my nice folded piles and fling the clothes around and flop on them. Then I have to be really quick with folding and putting away!
Part B - Do you have an area in your life that you know that the Lord is tugging at some heart strings that needs to be cleaned up? Have a testimony of your past struggle(s) that might help another homeschooling mom? Share a piece of your heart (dirty laundry) that you are seeking a good washing or how it got cleaned up. Sharing with one another is a great way to have your post feel human and real.
Back when I was attending Bible school and we were beginning to think about where we as a couple might serve as missionaries, Shane began to consider Peru as a place to go. He talked about it a lot with me and our friends, he read books, and any information he could find about Peru and the Quechua people. This made me very uneasy! Not because I didn't want to go overseas, in fact, I was really thinking about where we would go. You see, the mission group we were in training with had no plans at the time to send any of their missionaries to Peru. I began to question all Shane's ideas about going to Peru. What mission group WOULD we go with then? Who would be partners with us? Where exactly would we go in Peru? And so on.
He began to answer some of those questions with his thoughts and ideas but even those were unsettling. It involved joining another mission group and seeing if they would stand behind us, finding partners who would join us, and finding a good location in Peru to work. There were just too many uncertainties and variables in my opinion! The main thought that kept running through my mind was "It won't work!"
Well, God began to break down all my objections by proving me wrong over and over again! 
We were accepted to work with the mission group we are now with, they were totally behind us going to Peru and working in the area we are now. A good friend of Shane's decided to join our team (and later he got married so we got to be two couples!) and the Lord really went before us and answered many prayers (some that people had been praying long before we even knew about the Quechua people or considered working with them) to make it possible to put our team in a place where we could come alongside other missionaries who have been here a lot longer than us. God's plan was to fit us in to fill a need and complete another piece of the bigger picture of his plan to reach the Quechua people with the Truth of God's Word in this specific area. Even now when I am tempted to question what's going on with "How is this EVER going to work?" kinds of questions, I usually remember what God has already done in spite of my unbelief. What an amazing Plan He has going on! I've also learned that God is MUCH bigger than anything we could ever think or plan on our own.
Part C - FIND a scripture this week that pertains to this assignment to help you with your laundry and share it this week.
This is the main verse that comes to mind. Just as the angel said to Mary when he told her Jesus would be conceived and that her cousin Elizabeth was also pregnant with John, God continued to make this truth know to me as we watched God make it possible for us to come to Peru and as I look into the future.
Luke 1:37 - "For nothing is impossible with God."
I love what these verse says too:
Philippians 4:6-7 - "Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."
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