God is Good

A little over a month ago, I was speaking to a couple at my church who is adopting a 3 yr old girl from Russia about the return trip they were making in October to hopefully finalize the adoption and bring her home. Because of the laws in Russia, they have to be there for the adoption hearing and then wait at least ten days before they can take their daughter with them, at which time they have to get her visa in order. With their family of five (six on the return trip), the plane tickets and extended stay become expensive. When we spoke in July, they had about half of the money they needed.

God laid it on my heart to put together a garage sale at the church to help raise money for their trip. The elders green lighted it, Cinco green lighted it and we were good to go!! My mom and I spent all last week receiving, organizing and pricing donations in the church sanctuary. I could only come after 4 on M-TH (when Nate got home) but we'd stay until at least 9 each night. My mom was there during the day every day as well (I tried bringing the kids, but it was counter productive :). We didn't know how we would get it all done, but without even organizing it or asking for help, people would drop by during the day to help. Inevitably they would show up right before a big influx of donations. God timed everything perfectly to where there were always enough people there to get the work done... it was very cool to watch :)

It became very clear that God was running this event and I stopped worrying about if we'd advertised enough or if we'd have any shoppers, because I knew that God was going to make this sale as successful as he wanted. On Saturday, I showed up 30 minutes before the start of the sale and shoppers were already lined up outside. By the time the doors opened, we had a thick line wrapping around the building and people streamed in "like it was Black Friday at Walmart" as one volunteer put it perfectly. It was crazy to see that that many people had showed up already! We had a crazy first hour and then a steady stream of shoppers for the next four hours after that!

All of our volunteers showed up on time and worked hard. The last shopper left (without be asked) 5 minutes before the official end of the sale. The Katy Christian Ministries truck arrived 10 minutes later when our volunteers had already boxed up all the remaining items for donation. The sanctuary was cleared out, vacuumed, and completely back to normal for Sunday morning by 30 minutes after the end of the sale..... We thought we would have several hours of clean up for sure! It all went so smoothly that you could almost see God orchestrating the entire thing as it went. Our grand total raised at the end of the week was $4,667.05!! God is so good!