A Hoarders paradise and one VERY grateful family

It came and it went, and what a weekend it was! Thank you to everyone who played a part in helping us pull together our adoption yard sale fundraiser last week. We cannot tell you how much it means to us to know we have friends and family who are willing to drop everything for a weekend to help bring baby China home.

Let’s start with the donors… your generosity and kindness for donating enough items to fill our garage and entire house was shocking. Our greatest fear was that we wouldn’t have enough items to sell to make an impact, but all of you exceeded our expectations. Super hero capes, hair bows, hand-made backpacks were among some of the local crafts available during the sale. Our local Chick-fil-A was kind enough to support us with coffee and even Krispy Kreme sent over some donuts. All volunteers were also blessed with a pizza lunch from one of John’s co-workers.

Next the volunteers… the 5:30am set-up crew worked magic. It felt like we were never going to empty the house completely. John’s parents were in town and helped set-up and organize, and our neighbors helped out wherever they could.  Everett’s preschool teacher Ms. Cindy and her husband helped out for both days and several of John’s co-workers and their wives spent all day Saturday with us restocking items, organizing and providing much needed support. It’s amazing how God provides when you least expect it.

The weather… Saturday was beautiful. We had over 200 customers and sold over half our items. However, later Saturday evening it started raining… Sunday was a different story with rain all day. Our volunteers pushed through though. We even updated our signs to read “Still open in the rain” to try and attract more customers. And they kept coming. Our biggest fear was not knowing what to do with all the extra stuff. The slightly “damp” items we had left.

We learned a lot through the process about each other and about our community. A small blog posting does not do anyone justice who helped out, but know that you were a gift from God that weekend. Lending us tables and tents, helping set-up, running the checkout counter, overseeing the craft table, “moving the merchandise”, delivering the larger items, restocking tables, organizing the clothing, watching our children for the day, dropping off items at Goodwill, etc. All would have been lost without you.

The weekend was a true display of God’s grace for us and we need to remember to give God the glory for all of our sales… all $6,500 of it. His Grace truly is Amazing.

Please continue to pray for Baby China!

John