Originally, we were scheduled for a door-to-door light bulb giveaway, but with the weather being in the 20s with snow and 30mph winds, even a warm public bathroom was preferable to being outside. For us, visiting Oneonta businesses and cleaning their bathrooms as an act of kindness is an easy and inexpensive activity to do. It sounds weird, but this is one of our favorite AoKs. Cleaning the restrooms of businesses was the first AoK that our church performed for our community, and it was what we did on Day #1 of this 30 Days of Kindness campaign.Laura and I have cleaning public restrooms down to a routine. We have a designated bucket of supplies ready to go, and we make a great cleaning team. I roll up my sleeves and hit the toilets and Laura cleans the sinks and mirrors. We again went to Oneonta's downtown to visit the businesses that we missed on round 1, as a bonus, a strip of businesses lined up next to each other meant less walking outside in the cold.
The first place we cleaned was one of our favorite coffee shops Capresso Coffee Bar. We have visited here many times as customers, but this was our first visit to Capresso as cleaners. Being a Thursday evening, it was not too busy, which gave us a good opportunity to get to know the clerk. He is a young Jamaican man named Klasic, who seemed a little confused by our gesture. It took a little convincing to let us clean the bathroom, but he eventually gave us the go ahead.
Laura and I made the bathroom sparkle, and when we came out Klasic greeted us with free hot beverages. We insisted that this AoK was a free service, but he was intent on rewarding our efforts with premium hot beverages. As we sipped our beverages, I got to talk to Klasic about Jamaican ska music (a passion of mine) and I invited him to an upcoming a ska show that we are having.
Klasic seemed touched by our cleaning efforts, but at the same time he admitted that his first thought was that it was a little weird (I can't argue with that). That gave me an opportunity to explain our motives, how Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve, and how we believe this means Christians are to be servants to our community. Klasic asked us, "Are you doing this for Lent." We answered no, but at the same time, this is very much like Lent for us. I can definitely see this being an annual Lent-like tradition for our church, except instead of sacrificing for a season, we give.
It was encouraging to share the Gospel with our new friend, we told him that we would be back to wash his windows next week. We then stopped at Sal's Pizza. They let us clean, but business picked up and they got too busy to talk with us. As a rule, we try and pick businesses that are not busy for bathroom cleaning, this will give us time to talk with workers.
We next went to Pyramid Liqueur Store, this was an interesting stop because we cleaned their bathroom almost 3 years ago, and to our delight the same clerk was working and he remembered us. We knew where to go and gave that bathroom the Redemption Movement treatment. Bill was the guy working that night, and we got to chat with him for 10-15 minutes about church and his new puppy that he had with him.
Our last stop was The Bearded Dragon, Oneonta's best comic book and game store. Gaming is a subculture that I have been getting more into over the past few years. I have found myself more interested in board games and less into video games (so much so that I want to incorporate games into our Friday night meetings), therefore a stop in The Bearded Dragon is always enjoyable for me.
Here we met Will, a 21 year old young man from Oneonta who goes to school in Binghamton. He wears a cross around his neck and we could tell that he understood what our mission was about. He pointed us towards the bathroom, which was in a corner of a room full of gamers battling wits. We definitely stood out as we maneuvered our way around tables carrying buckets of cleaning supplies, and it was great to explain our AoK the gamers that were curious.
After we were finished cleaning, we hung back and talked to Will. He was appreciative of our efforts and gave us lots of insight into how to minister to Oneonta culture, like confirming to us how burnt out local people are from door-to-door evangelist. We had a great talk with our new friend about church and gaming, and I look forward to inviting him to game nights at our church and schooling him in Dominion.
Cleaning four bathrooms led to Laura and I making three new friends. As much as we both value relationships, these new friendships are totally worth a few minutes of scrubbing toilets. 15 days into 30 Days of Kindness and we have served a few hundred residents of Oneonta and made dozens of new friends. 15 more days to go and we can't wait to see who else God will place before us!
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