Words can not express my heart's emotions as I write this blog. My view of the Holy, Awesome, Incredible, Sovereign God that I serve has been broadened as far as the eye can see. God thankfully does not live in the box I often put Him in, He rips to shreds the tapestry I have woven of Him, and in such a precious, sweet, gracious way demonstrates His love for me and my family.
We started this idea of a Yard Sale fundraiser after we read many, many, many blogs of adoptive families and ways that they raised support; so we absent mindedly thought, "how hard could that be?" And so began the pursuit of getting this thing up and running. Little did we know what awaited us. As I announced it on Facebook (fundraising without social media seems impossible these days!) and immediately friends began contacting me with things to donate to our sale. Over the next several weeks, stuff just kept on rolling in and rolling in and rolling in. My garage began to burst at the seams and the overwhelming task of pricing things began. At first it was super fun, but I'm not going to lie, it began to become daunting as the stacks of boxes grew higher and higher.
I learned alot about myself through this endeavor, and the things I learned were not things that I am proud of; the reality of my need to control things surfaced and began staring me in the face with an ugly glare. My stress level started to rise and my view of God's capabilities to meet our needs and pull this thing together was shamefully very small. I learned much about my prayer life as I went to the Lord asking him to bless our efforts, bless and multiply this stuff, supply help, and fund this task; however I asked of Him on a continuous basis often doubting that He would do it the way I hoped for. Thankfully, His faithfulness does not depend on my faith.
As the week of the sale arrived, the Lord graciously provided me with two wonderful ladies that knew exactly what to do, and they managed to work the mountain I had created in my head down to a molehill. They helped me finished tagging and pricing, get a plan together, and then come Thursday, they helped me execute. These two women were indeed helpers sent by GOD!!!
We asked a few people around the church to help us get everything loaded and transported to the site of the sale (which the site itself was a blessing as well, I'll get to that later) and unloaded and set up. Come Thursday morning, we had between 13-15 people there to help!!! Talk about thankful; we were! So we got everything loaded onto trucks and trailers and taken to the site to be unloaded and set up. These people worked their hearts out; they sweat, swatted flies, lifted, unpacked, etc until we split at 12:30 to get ready for a funeral.
A sweet precious member of our church family at LOGOS Baptist Church went home to be with the Lord at the beginning of the week. It gave much reflection to me as we paused what we were doing to recognize the Godly legacy this sweet lady left behind; and it made me all the more thankful to be a part of a body of believers who set aside their days/weekends to mourn with the family who lost a dear member of their family and picked right back up to help us with this Yard Sale. Talk about bearing one another's burdens!!!
We returned after the funeral was over to continue setting up and to have a presale. I went home that night overwhelmed with relief that it was time to begin! I had decided Wednesday night before I went to bed, that I was not going to look at the forecast for the next three days and trust God to take care of the weather for us. It rained all week leading up to the sale and I was a bit nervous about what to expect for the next couple of days...GOD IS GOOD! Thursday, not a cloud in the sky, Friday clouds that provided cool breezes and no gnats, and Saturday beautiful skies and breezes with no gnats. God was in every single detail!
To say that this sale was a success would be a tremendous understatement. Successes are things that can be achieved by human beings...There are no words in the human vocabulary that describe just how wonderfully amazing this sale was! Stephen and I prayed for a specific amount from this sale and let's just say God blew us out of the water. He more than doubled the amount we prayed for and is currently still adding to it.
We prayed for $2,000 and right now we are sitting just shy of $5,000!!! Yes, you read that right, $5,000!!! God is Good! He is so so good. He is GOOOOOD! What else is there to say but that? He was in every single detail and I was reminded that just as He multiplied the fish and loaves for the 5,000. He mulitplied the "stuff" for $5,000 :).
I wish I could capture every single detail on this blog to portray to you exactly how everything happened, but there is just NO way. God blew our minds with the overwhelming support of our church body, family and friends that showed up to help, buy, and encourage; He blessed our hearts with people who overwhelmingly donated and sacrificed in order to make this sale a possibility and He showed us He is JEHOVAH-JIREH- our provider! He exceeded any and all expectations we had for this sale and I want to tell of His wondrous works!
As if all He did wasn't enough, He blessed my hearts ten times over by this final event. A dear sweet precious family that the Lord has crossed our paths with has adopted two children over the last several years and they have an amazing eight year old son that asked me if he could sell lemonade at our yard sale. I told him I thought that would be a great idea! He told me that we could have the money he made, I however assured him that would not be necessary and that he should save it for something he wanted. That sweet fella was out there Friday and Saturday manning his lemonade table and doing a mighty fine job I might add! He was sweet to all of his customers and occasionally gave refills at no charge! My heart was blessed just to have him out there, he added such a sweet touch to the look of things! However, come Saturday afternoon after we were just about finished cleaning up, he came outside and handed me a bag with a note in it that read, "Kid's need families. I love you love Alex." I sit in tears even now as I type this remembering the sweet look on his face as I finished reading that note. I can not convey the emotions my heart was filled with after receiving this. The bag he handed me had ALL the money he had earned which totaled $80.00. You see this precious act was not just motivated by a good deed, but Alex was adopted and needed a family and was given one He was the recipient of people working to provide him with a family so he saw an opportunity to do that for another...I'll pause while you grab a tissue...
Alex was the Lord's exclamation mark at the end of this day as if to say, (what I've been told over and over) "It has nothing to do with you Christy! It has everything to do with MY GLORY and MY FAME! I FUND WHAT I FAVOR!"
This experience was incredible, one I'll never forget, and one I look forward to the day to share with our sweet one to be. The countless people that chipped in to meet a need, the beautiful the weather the Lord provided, the location He provided, the stuff people gave, the people who showed up to buy, the precious little one who gave all he earned. Our family is forever forever forever grateful to the Lord and His people! TO GOD BE THE GLORY GREAT THINGS HE KEEPS DOING!!!
I learned alot about myself through this endeavor, and the things I learned were not things that I am proud of; the reality of my need to control things surfaced and began staring me in the face with an ugly glare. My stress level started to rise and my view of God's capabilities to meet our needs and pull this thing together was shamefully very small. I learned much about my prayer life as I went to the Lord asking him to bless our efforts, bless and multiply this stuff, supply help, and fund this task; however I asked of Him on a continuous basis often doubting that He would do it the way I hoped for. Thankfully, His faithfulness does not depend on my faith.
As the week of the sale arrived, the Lord graciously provided me with two wonderful ladies that knew exactly what to do, and they managed to work the mountain I had created in my head down to a molehill. They helped me finished tagging and pricing, get a plan together, and then come Thursday, they helped me execute. These two women were indeed helpers sent by GOD!!!
We asked a few people around the church to help us get everything loaded and transported to the site of the sale (which the site itself was a blessing as well, I'll get to that later) and unloaded and set up. Come Thursday morning, we had between 13-15 people there to help!!! Talk about thankful; we were! So we got everything loaded onto trucks and trailers and taken to the site to be unloaded and set up. These people worked their hearts out; they sweat, swatted flies, lifted, unpacked, etc until we split at 12:30 to get ready for a funeral.
A sweet precious member of our church family at LOGOS Baptist Church went home to be with the Lord at the beginning of the week. It gave much reflection to me as we paused what we were doing to recognize the Godly legacy this sweet lady left behind; and it made me all the more thankful to be a part of a body of believers who set aside their days/weekends to mourn with the family who lost a dear member of their family and picked right back up to help us with this Yard Sale. Talk about bearing one another's burdens!!!
We returned after the funeral was over to continue setting up and to have a presale. I went home that night overwhelmed with relief that it was time to begin! I had decided Wednesday night before I went to bed, that I was not going to look at the forecast for the next three days and trust God to take care of the weather for us. It rained all week leading up to the sale and I was a bit nervous about what to expect for the next couple of days...GOD IS GOOD! Thursday, not a cloud in the sky, Friday clouds that provided cool breezes and no gnats, and Saturday beautiful skies and breezes with no gnats. God was in every single detail!
To say that this sale was a success would be a tremendous understatement. Successes are things that can be achieved by human beings...There are no words in the human vocabulary that describe just how wonderfully amazing this sale was! Stephen and I prayed for a specific amount from this sale and let's just say God blew us out of the water. He more than doubled the amount we prayed for and is currently still adding to it.
We prayed for $2,000 and right now we are sitting just shy of $5,000!!! Yes, you read that right, $5,000!!! God is Good! He is so so good. He is GOOOOOD! What else is there to say but that? He was in every single detail and I was reminded that just as He multiplied the fish and loaves for the 5,000. He mulitplied the "stuff" for $5,000 :).
I wish I could capture every single detail on this blog to portray to you exactly how everything happened, but there is just NO way. God blew our minds with the overwhelming support of our church body, family and friends that showed up to help, buy, and encourage; He blessed our hearts with people who overwhelmingly donated and sacrificed in order to make this sale a possibility and He showed us He is JEHOVAH-JIREH- our provider! He exceeded any and all expectations we had for this sale and I want to tell of His wondrous works!
As if all He did wasn't enough, He blessed my hearts ten times over by this final event. A dear sweet precious family that the Lord has crossed our paths with has adopted two children over the last several years and they have an amazing eight year old son that asked me if he could sell lemonade at our yard sale. I told him I thought that would be a great idea! He told me that we could have the money he made, I however assured him that would not be necessary and that he should save it for something he wanted. That sweet fella was out there Friday and Saturday manning his lemonade table and doing a mighty fine job I might add! He was sweet to all of his customers and occasionally gave refills at no charge! My heart was blessed just to have him out there, he added such a sweet touch to the look of things! However, come Saturday afternoon after we were just about finished cleaning up, he came outside and handed me a bag with a note in it that read, "Kid's need families. I love you love Alex." I sit in tears even now as I type this remembering the sweet look on his face as I finished reading that note. I can not convey the emotions my heart was filled with after receiving this. The bag he handed me had ALL the money he had earned which totaled $80.00. You see this precious act was not just motivated by a good deed, but Alex was adopted and needed a family and was given one He was the recipient of people working to provide him with a family so he saw an opportunity to do that for another...I'll pause while you grab a tissue...
Alex was the Lord's exclamation mark at the end of this day as if to say, (what I've been told over and over) "It has nothing to do with you Christy! It has everything to do with MY GLORY and MY FAME! I FUND WHAT I FAVOR!"
This experience was incredible, one I'll never forget, and one I look forward to the day to share with our sweet one to be. The countless people that chipped in to meet a need, the beautiful the weather the Lord provided, the location He provided, the stuff people gave, the people who showed up to buy, the precious little one who gave all he earned. Our family is forever forever forever grateful to the Lord and His people! TO GOD BE THE GLORY GREAT THINGS HE KEEPS DOING!!!
Just a glimpse...
Here we go...
End of day Thursday, put all the tarps on the tables to cover "merchandise" and lowered the tents...THEN PRAYED FOR NO RAIN!!!
Lots of stuff, and people hard at work!
It was 'hoppin'
I told ya it was big!
We had something for everybody!
Before you ask...it's all sold!
Workers and supporters (also known as family :)
What's a good yard sale without some cold lemonade?
This was the AWESOME Lemonade Man! If you missed him, you missed a treat!
Awesome Lemonade Man and Crew (sorry its sideways)
We had stuff, stuff, and more stuff!
I think we had six or seven tents :) We were hard to miss!
Took a picture of the skies on my way home that night as a beautiful reminder of the Lord's faithfulness and goodness to us over the last 3 days! I will sing His praises and tell of his mighty works because He is good!!! Thank you Lord for your provisions through this endeavor!
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