Memory Verse: Psalm 18: 27-29 “You, O Lord, keep my lamp burning: my God turns my darkness into light. With your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall.”

Dear Grandchildren,

I’ve done plenty of hard and unpleasant work in my life, even when I was very small. Some of you who are big enough to help your mother with chores might think that doing dishes is rather unpleasant, even with all the hot water and soap that each American home has available. And you only might do them for your own family. But I’ll tell you how we went about doing dishes after each meal in the orphanage.

In the first place, we had to fill the water tank in our coal stove to heat the water. There were about forty people that got the dishes dirty, and all of the dishes had to be washed, dried, and put away. We did not use ordinary dish soap, but very strong white powder that was very hard on our hands. In the winter my hands were often raw after I washed the dishes. Nobody liked that job, and it was one of the most frequent punishments given us when we disobeyed.

We took turns doing the dishes for a week at a time, and since there were three girls on kitchen duty, we took turns washing, drying, and putting away. Putting the dishes away was the easiest of the three jobs, and we complained the least about that. For rinsing the dishes, the water had to be boiled. So anything that needed to be done with hot water took a lot of time. Isn’t it nice to go into the kitchen in America, and just turn the hot water spigot on? There comes the hot water without any waiting!

In the orphanage, we had lots of cold water that came to our house through the pipes just like in America. Every morning, we washed ourselves in cold water, and only on Saturday did we take baths in hot water. In our bathroom there was a tall tank, and underneath it was a place to burn coal. If it happened to be my turn to have bath duty on Saturday, I would be responsible for heating the water and cleaning the bathtub. I had to start working on it right after lunch, because we went to school on Saturdays until noon.

The first thing to be done was to start the fire. This involved going out to the shed across the yard to fill one or two buckets with coal. The coal in the shed was in big chunks so that I had to get an axe and break the coal into smaller pieces. I would carry the buckets to the bathroom and begin to make the fire with wood. When it got going, I would put some coal into it. We had two large bathrooms where we took our hot baths. There were two girls in charge every Saturday afternoon. (The toilets were in separate rooms. We had four of them that we used only in the winter. During the summer months, we had to use the outhouse.)

Many times taking baths would run into the night, and this required keeping the fire going to have enough hot water. There was nothing that I dreaded more than going out to the coal shed in the dark, and trying to break the coal into chunks until the buckets were full. Since there was no light in that shed, we used a lantern. A lantern didn’t light up the whole shed, but only the part right next to me. It was often very cold and I shivered all over. I always imagined that someone was hiding in a dark corner, or maybe some dog would come and jump on me from nowhere, or that some spooky creature was waiting for me. I was always glad to get back inside safe and sound!

Questions:

1. Can you think of something you had to do that was difficult? Was it because it was hard work or because you were afraid?

2. God helped the psalmist thorugh hard times. How can God help you do things that are scary or difficult?

3. When Nadzia was afraid, the lantern lit up the darkness. How can God turn your darkness into light?