Adoption Update: Our Yard Sale
Wow, I can't believe it's been FOUR MONTHS since my last blog post. I guess you could say I'm not very consistent with blogging. There always seems to be so much life stuff happening around here!
Here's a bit of an update:
We've spent the last few months going through our home to find things to sell to help grow our adoption fund. Most of the items have sold, which is very exciting!! We've also had friends donate things to us that they were getting rid of, which has also been a huge blessing.
Mid-June, my friend Christina offered to have a yard sale benefiting our adoption. We spread the word to our church family and community, set the date for July 13th, and had many people donate items for the sale. It was truly overwhelming to see how generous people were. We set our fundraising goal for the sale as $2750--the remaining amount we needed to pay for our known adoption expenses (adoption lawyer, post-placement visits, etc). This amount felt like such a stretch to even believe for!!
Just 2 weeks later, we had every penny of that $2750. BLOWN. AWAY. I didn't know what to do except just smile in awe at everything God was doing.
Christina and I talked about what our next goal should be, and I told her that if God could blow my goal out of the water, then wouldn't it be amazing to see Him give us DOUBLE what we asked for?! We started believing for $2750 *over* our goal, with this money going toward our unknown expenses (birthmom and travel costs).
We continued selling items right up until a few days before the garage sale, making roughly $1900 towards our second goal. I look at that number and don't even really know where all that money came from except to say God just kept blessing us!!
Finally, the day of the sale came. We arrived at Christina's house, set up the items and Selah's lemonade stand, and waited. At 7 am, when we opened, one lady showed up. I got a bit nervous, thinking, "What if we don't get a lot of people?" I started praying for God to send us a constant stream of people.
You know what?? He answered my prayer. After that lady left, another couple cars showed up. Then some more people. Then some more. It literally didn't stop for more than a few minutes ALL. DAY. LONG. I thought we might be open 7-2 if we were lucky? Um...we were literally open 7-5 and the people didn't stop. At 5, we started packing up and a few drifters came through. A lady came to pick up items at 7pm. It was insane.
Throughout the sale, people were so excited to get some bargains and were so excited to contribute to our adoption. One lady told me that her daughter had seen the ads on a local Facebook group and said, "Mom, it's for an adoption--we HAVE to go!" She told me how her children all have a heart for adoption and want to adopt someday.
We had a young man who lived nearby who wanted to buy a set of golf clubs from us. His roommate had already purchased a music box and we'd had a long conversation with them both about our adoption and various other topics. He saw the golf clubs and asked, "How much?" I said, "How about $35?" We asked if he needed a golf cart and said we'd throw it in for $5. He said, "How about $50 for both?" We were so blown away. We later discovered he had gone home and contributed $150 on our Go Fund Me page!
It was a day of some incredible favor from God, but we also had the opportunity to bless others too. We had received 10 LARGE trash bags full of clothes and shoes from a friend. Needless to say, there was a lot of hanging involved in prepping for the sale, haha. We didn't know if clothes would sell, especially with so much of it available, but figured it was worth a shot. We sold clothes for $3 a bag.
From where we were sitting, there was a rack FULL of men's dress coats. I remember sitting there praying, "Lord, I really want these clothes to go to people who need them. I want to bless our community today." Wouldn't you know it, a short time later, a young man in his early 20s came along with his mom and started looking at the clothes. He asked about pricing, and I told him about the $3/bag deal. He was so excited. His mom started tearfully telling me how he'd just started a new job that he had to wear business clothes for, but they had no way to buy everything he needed new. It "just so happened" that many of the coats and dress pants we had were his size. He walked away with two large paper bags full of the clothes he needed for work, including a very nice London Fog winter coat. They thanked me profusely for being such a blessing, which gave me the opportunity to tell them that they were an answered prayer for me, too!
Overall, at our sale, we raised $1,546.31, which included over $200 raised by Selah and her friends at the lemonade stand!!! This brought our total amount raised (including some donations) between June 10 and July 13 to $6,194.27. Isn't that insane?!?!
Including what we'd raised prior to June 10, we have now raised $8,991.05. (Some of this has already been spent on our home study expenses.) The remaining amount we're looking to raise is $1008.95.
This has been such a season of seeing God's faithfulness poured out over our family. We are so in awe of what He has done! Even though we are still waiting to be matched with a birthmama, we know that the same God who has provided every penny for our adoption is at work to bring it to completion in His time and in His way.
Here's a bit of an update:
We've spent the last few months going through our home to find things to sell to help grow our adoption fund. Most of the items have sold, which is very exciting!! We've also had friends donate things to us that they were getting rid of, which has also been a huge blessing.
Mid-June, my friend Christina offered to have a yard sale benefiting our adoption. We spread the word to our church family and community, set the date for July 13th, and had many people donate items for the sale. It was truly overwhelming to see how generous people were. We set our fundraising goal for the sale as $2750--the remaining amount we needed to pay for our known adoption expenses (adoption lawyer, post-placement visits, etc). This amount felt like such a stretch to even believe for!!
Just 2 weeks later, we had every penny of that $2750. BLOWN. AWAY. I didn't know what to do except just smile in awe at everything God was doing.
Christina and I talked about what our next goal should be, and I told her that if God could blow my goal out of the water, then wouldn't it be amazing to see Him give us DOUBLE what we asked for?! We started believing for $2750 *over* our goal, with this money going toward our unknown expenses (birthmom and travel costs).
We continued selling items right up until a few days before the garage sale, making roughly $1900 towards our second goal. I look at that number and don't even really know where all that money came from except to say God just kept blessing us!!
Finally, the day of the sale came. We arrived at Christina's house, set up the items and Selah's lemonade stand, and waited. At 7 am, when we opened, one lady showed up. I got a bit nervous, thinking, "What if we don't get a lot of people?" I started praying for God to send us a constant stream of people.
You know what?? He answered my prayer. After that lady left, another couple cars showed up. Then some more people. Then some more. It literally didn't stop for more than a few minutes ALL. DAY. LONG. I thought we might be open 7-2 if we were lucky? Um...we were literally open 7-5 and the people didn't stop. At 5, we started packing up and a few drifters came through. A lady came to pick up items at 7pm. It was insane.
Throughout the sale, people were so excited to get some bargains and were so excited to contribute to our adoption. One lady told me that her daughter had seen the ads on a local Facebook group and said, "Mom, it's for an adoption--we HAVE to go!" She told me how her children all have a heart for adoption and want to adopt someday.
We had a young man who lived nearby who wanted to buy a set of golf clubs from us. His roommate had already purchased a music box and we'd had a long conversation with them both about our adoption and various other topics. He saw the golf clubs and asked, "How much?" I said, "How about $35?" We asked if he needed a golf cart and said we'd throw it in for $5. He said, "How about $50 for both?" We were so blown away. We later discovered he had gone home and contributed $150 on our Go Fund Me page!
It was a day of some incredible favor from God, but we also had the opportunity to bless others too. We had received 10 LARGE trash bags full of clothes and shoes from a friend. Needless to say, there was a lot of hanging involved in prepping for the sale, haha. We didn't know if clothes would sell, especially with so much of it available, but figured it was worth a shot. We sold clothes for $3 a bag.
From where we were sitting, there was a rack FULL of men's dress coats. I remember sitting there praying, "Lord, I really want these clothes to go to people who need them. I want to bless our community today." Wouldn't you know it, a short time later, a young man in his early 20s came along with his mom and started looking at the clothes. He asked about pricing, and I told him about the $3/bag deal. He was so excited. His mom started tearfully telling me how he'd just started a new job that he had to wear business clothes for, but they had no way to buy everything he needed new. It "just so happened" that many of the coats and dress pants we had were his size. He walked away with two large paper bags full of the clothes he needed for work, including a very nice London Fog winter coat. They thanked me profusely for being such a blessing, which gave me the opportunity to tell them that they were an answered prayer for me, too!
Overall, at our sale, we raised $1,546.31, which included over $200 raised by Selah and her friends at the lemonade stand!!! This brought our total amount raised (including some donations) between June 10 and July 13 to $6,194.27. Isn't that insane?!?!
Including what we'd raised prior to June 10, we have now raised $8,991.05. (Some of this has already been spent on our home study expenses.) The remaining amount we're looking to raise is $1008.95.
This has been such a season of seeing God's faithfulness poured out over our family. We are so in awe of what He has done! Even though we are still waiting to be matched with a birthmama, we know that the same God who has provided every penny for our adoption is at work to bring it to completion in His time and in His way.
This is so amazing!!! Thank you for sharing!
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