The Lowly and Magic Job of Cleaning the Bathroom

While my husband and I were serving as Mission Leaders in the Dominican Republic, our Area President, Elder Devn Cornish shared the following story: During the sixties, a stake conference was held in the Macon, GA stake. The conference was being presided over by Elder Spencer W. Kimball, who at the time was a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles.

During the course of the conference, Elder Kimball went into the bathroom. Someone else entered and found him cleaning the sinks and the mirrors. They were embarrassed and said, “Oh, Elder Kimball you can’t do that, you’re an Apostle!” Elder Kimball said, “This is the Lord’s house, and I just wouldn’t want Him to see it this way.” Having said that, Elder Kimball went back to the meeting. As you can imagine, that story got around the stake pretty fast! The members began to clean and respect the Lord’s building much better.

After hearing this story, I happened to attend a Sacrament meeting in one of the wards in Santiago. The building was lovely, but it was surrounded by a high white stucco fence. As often happens in the Dominican Republic, the locals had made a trash dump in front of the fence in one area. It looked and smelled terrible.

I spoke to the Bishop and recounted Elder Cornish’s story. I suggested to the Bishop that since the building had the name of Jesus Christ on the front, we had an obligation to make sure it was a clean and holy place. To his credit, this wonderful Bishop took my words to heart. The ward had a clean-up project and began hauling off the trash. Some of the neighbors noticed what they were doing, and objected that it was a waste of time, since that spot had been a trash dump for a long time.

Explaining why it was important to respect a building that bore the name of Jesus Christ, the Bishop convinced the neighbors. The people who were there quickly spread the word in the neighborhood. Today the building and its surrounding fence are clean and beautiful.

Because of this story, I have ever since picked up a church bathroom whenever I see a stray paper or something out of place. It takes only a few seconds. It’s a small thing to do to honor the name of my Savior.

There are also a couple of wonderful stories about Mother Teresa and her relationship to bathrooms. She often taught her Missionaries of Charity that cleaning bathrooms is an excellent way to serve others. She likened it to Jesus doing the lowliest of jobs, with great love—cleaning the feet of His disciples. In fact, she credits that simple service as being the tool that got their charity accepted into the Soviet Union.

At that time Russia was completely closed off to international charities. Many had tried to get permission to start work there, but none were admitted. At this point Mother Teresa had projects in many different countries. In one of these countries her Missionary Sisters were serving very close to the Russian border. Mother Teresa suggested to them that they should slip across the border in the nighttime to the bordering villages and clean their public toilets, as a service to the people. It was a small thing they could do for a people who had many needs. Public toilets in the outlying villages were notoriously disgustingly dirty.

As the Missionaries of Charity cleaned the toilets, they left encouraging notes to the villagers there. Before long, there came such a demand from the villages along the border for the Soviet Union to admit Mother Teresa’s charity, that the government finally acquiesced. The charity was one of the first allowed into the Soviet Union. The magic power of cleaning bathrooms!

On another occasion, when Mother Teresa was older and in poor health, she was still visiting and inspiring workers in her various projects. One morning, a worker, whose assignment it was to clean the toilets that week, left without fulfilling her responsibility. Shortly after leaving, she realized that she had forgotten something important. She rushed back to the home, only to find Mother Teresa on her hands and knees mopping the bathroom floor. She was mortified. She begged Mother Teresa to get up and let the errant Sister fulfill her responsibility. Mother Teresa simply said, “There is no need for apology. It is a precious way for me to serve my Sisters, and by so doing, to serve my Savior.” This Sister said she has never since forgotten to fulfill her responsibilities in the morning, especially if she’s supposed to clean the toilets!

I suspect that most churches have full-time janitors, but in our church the buildings are generally cleaned by the members. Like everyone else, I groan a bit when I get an email informing me that our turn has arrived again. But once we arrive and everyone’s standing around offering to do this job or another, I always speak for the bathrooms. Everyone else seems to breathe a sigh of relief. I remember how Mother Teresa felt that cleaning bathrooms had a special power to reach hearts, because it demanded personal humility. Heaven knows I could use more personal humility!

Since I work in India, toilets are very important to me. One reason is that there are not nearly enough. I can’t count the times when we have been out working in a leprosy colony and there are no toilets available. On those occasions, I sometimes feel that my eyes are turning yellow before we finally can get to a toilet! I appreciate toilets! And a clean toilet is like a gift from God!

Toilets are incredibly important to the people we serve. When we enter into a new colony to serve them, it is always one of the first requests: Can you provide a toilet for us? Without toilets, people cannot have a clean water supply. Without a clean water supply, disease stalks their homes. Their children are always sick. They cannot have privacy when attending to personal needs. Over the years that I’ve worked in India, we have built hundreds of toilets. They have worked their magic. This simple thing has impacted thousands of lives. It has opened many hearts that were initially suspicious of our service.

When I first came to India in 2001 the majority of the people went to the bathroom outside. It was a very common sight, even on major streets in the middle of Chennai, to see a man with his back to you peeing on a fence. In fact, one of my favorite memories from my first trip was a visit we made to the new, modern shopping mall. Everyone was excited about it. They assured us it was very high class. We decided this was a site we shouldn’t miss.

When we arrived at the mall, there was a large sign with bright letters spelling out, NO SPITTING. The owners of this mall were clearly determined that this should be a high-class place. We took a picture of a man peeing on the sign—he clearly missed the message of the sign!

When we wanted to build our first school for children of the leprosy-affected, we bought 16 acres in a small village named Thottanaval. In these small villages, the stigma against leprosy is especially strong. When the villagers learned that we were building a school for children from leprosy colonies, they went nuts. The Panchayat (mayor) called us and insisted that we stop our building.

We had our Board member, Padma, contact him. As he was raving and ranting about leprosy affected children, Padma quietly suggested that if we built the school, we could also build some toilets for the Thottanaval village. The tone of the conversation changed immediately. The magic of the toilets won their hearts. Today, the village is very connected to our school. Many of the village children also attend the school and study side by side with children from leprosy colonies. For these people the stigma is a thing of the past. The magical power of a toilet!!

Sometimes we erroneously tell ourselves that if service isn’t big and noticeable, it doesn’t count. Actually, the exact opposite is true. Sometimes the most effective service is the one that is simple and not noticed by the world.

This is a picture of the old “bathroom/shower” in the Walajabad Leprosy Colony. Cobras were often a threat to those needing to use it. It clearly had no sewage runoff and no privacy.

This past month we built them a real toilet and shower. What a difference!