We live in apartments most of the year, because our family goes from city to city holding evangelistic meetings. One evening, after a meeting, my daughter and I took all of the dirty clothes out of our temporary apartment home to a laundromat. We closed the door on a naked apartment: the beds were stripped, the towels were taken down, our clothes supply was exhausted.

Everything went in the triple-load washer at the Perky Clean Laundromat. I didn’t feel very perky at 11:00 p.m., but I knew the job had to be done. Suddenly the washing machine stopped. The attendant called the manager. When he arrived, he said I’d have to come back in the morning. They were sending me home with no sheets to sleep on, no towels to dry on, and no clean clothes to put on!

I was steamed. Until Beth exclaimed, “Oh, Mom — being a minister’s family is so exciting! Isn’t this fun!” As she giggled with spontaneous glee, I saw she really meant it. I laughed with her. There wasn’t anything else to do. Except, of course, to thank God for my wonderful daughter, who used her influence to bless me at nearly midnight in the Perky Clean Laundromat.

By Gloria Bentzinger, Adventist Review, November 1996, With permission from Dale E. Galusha dalgal@pacificpress.com