The Results are IN

I know a lot of you have been waiting patiently to hear how our garage sale went over the weekend…. I won’t keep you waiting….. too much longer.

First, we need to thank every single person who donated items for us to sell – without you none of this would have been possible. I’d attempt to list you all by name, but I fear I would miss someone. So for all of you, THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS!

Thank you also to my nieces and nephews for their help with running the lemonade stand; Jessica for helping all day all three days, even on her 11th anniversary!; Julie and Deric for their amazing ability to sell ice to an Eskimo (they didn’t actually do this, but I have no doubt that they could!); Joanie for all her help with the sale and with running around picking up food and other things we needed so we could stay out there, and also for the most delicious cookies; Mom for coming out for a few hours on Saturday to help clean our house, so we could be ready for our home study; Laurie for coming out on the first day of our sale (on her way to work) to make sure things were going well and dropping off a ton of bags; lastly to Boz’s folks for coming out for a few hours on Thursday morning to make sure things were off to a good start!

So.. how did we do!? We made a grand total of $2,882!

PRAISE GOD!

We had a lot of repeat customers which was pretty cool. One woman from down the street came back 4-5 times the first day, and again on Friday. She was even calling her friends and sending them our way. We heard a few people on their phones calling people about the “huge garage sale, and super cheap prices” – HA HA!!

One thing that was really neat, was during the sale a few of our neighbors came by and dropped off more stuff for us to sell! One neighbor is a baseball coach and he dropped bags and bats, another dropped off like-new bikes (got a pretty penny for those!), the family across the street gave us bags of clothes, and other misc items. It was really cool seeing our neighbors pull together and help out like that. We also had a number of people buy things and told us to keep the change.

But EASILY our most exciting story was when God showed up, and confirmed, yet again (!) that HE WAS INVOLVED!

Saturday evening we were counting the money we made and added that to what my in-laws made at their garage sale. With both sales combined (including $ a family member owes us - they had us hold something for them) we came up with a total of $3,740. We were AMAZED as that was secretly what we were hoping to get around! You see, our next big payment is for the 1st Installment of our International Program Fee…. and that’s $3,750. Pretty amazing, right?

Well, it gets better!

We had a knock on our door that night and it was a woman and her daughter. They had been at the garage sale earlier that day and on her way home she said she felt bad that she couldn’t have given us more and was praying that she wished she had an extra $20 to give us. Later that day when she checked the mail, there was a random check for….. you guessed it, $20.00! She called her husband and told him about it, and he told her she should follow her heart and where God was leading her…. which was right to our front door! She actually came back and had written us a check for $20 which puts us $10 OVER what we needed to reach!

She said she wished it was more but we told her how we were short that exact amount. And how God used her to bring us right where we needed to be, not a penny more, not a penny less (this was before we did the math again - oops). By the end of our conversation we were all in tears and in awe of how God used her to bless us. So to you, thank you for listening to God and for coming back! You blessed us more than you know.

It was such an awesome night seeing God work like that. After that we know we have nothing to worry about, God is CLEARLY involved, and we know that He will provide for us… what we need… when we need it.