"O give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name. Make known His deeds among the peoples. Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; speak of all His wonders...Remember His wonderful deeds which He has done." - 1 Chronicles 16:8-12
This has been my verse I have been reading this week to remind myself of all that God has done for us this past week, not only of the success of our yard sale but just in giving me the strength to get through it.
First of all I want to again say thank you to everyone who emailed us, called us, tracked us down to give us donations for the yard sale. It was a tremendous amount of support and we are just so humbled by all of the donations. So much so that, at first, I was a little disappointed in our yard sale because we just had so much stuff still leftover. But I want to say that God is faithful and we are so blessed that we were able to raise about $637.75 over the two-day sale.
At first I thought it was almost $700 ($687.75 to be exact), but my mom brought $50 to be able to make change and be sure we had enough ones, fives, and quarters. I didn't realize that she didn't take that back when she left. So anyway, we are happy with what we made, plus my mom decided to donate that $50 so that still brings our total to $687.75. Also, I just sold another item leftover from the yard sale for $35, so that brings our total to $722.75. Since I am splitting what I made from the garage sale with my sister, that means we each made $361.37 to put into our fundraising accounts.
I also want to say thank you so much to my mom, dad, sister, nephew, and even my 80 year-old aunt who came out to help me during the two-day sale. My sister and I spent all day Thursday continuing to sort through all of the donations, and I think it pretty much took us until Midnight to finish getting everything ready for the sale. Then she spent the night because Jeremy was working that day and on Friday as well. So she was there getting up with me at 6 a.m. to get everything out for the sale. Jeremy was only able to be home during the sale for a few hours because of work and his soccer photography, so that is what I mean by God giving me the strength to get through all of it.
Here is a photo of my nephew, Seth, and Reece the night before the sale. We had worn them out with all the sorting! They are good pretenders! Haha!!
We
got pretty busy with the yard sale, so I forgot to take many photos. I
had one of Jadon and Seth. They had made signs and were
waving at cars going by trying to entice them to stop at our yard sale.
However, somehow it got deleted off our camera. But here is a shot of all the toys we were selling in the yard sale.
And here is one of us almost ready to open for the sale.
I also have several items that I am still trying to sell on Craigslist and my sister, who has an eBay business, is trying to sell a lot of the nicer donations on eBay as well. So please keep praying for those items to sell as well. We could possibly make another $200 or more on those things if we could just sell them.
To update you on our other fundraiser, Jeremy's soccer photography, he has been working so diligently but it is definitely paying off. He was able to move over $200 a few days ago that he had made from selling the photos, but then this week he told me he's already made another $200! So I am so amazed by this!! And then my sister and I both received a donation of $100, so God is really moving in our fundraising efforts.
In case you are lost (because I almost am), I am so happy to say our grand total for the amount I have raised so far for my account is $1611.37!! If I did the math correct, my sister has also raised about $711 so far as well. This does include the $250 deposit we had to pay, but we are still just amazed we are doing so well when about a month ago we really had not raised hardly anything!! God is good!!
That being said, I want to remind everyone that we still have a long way to go since each trip is $4300 per person. We really haven't received very many straight financial donations, but we are so hopeful we will start seeing some of those kinds of donations come in as well. There honestly is no amount that is too small. I mean if 400 people could only give $5 each, that would raise $2,000!!
So please pray about it and if you feel led, you can go to our church website to make a financial contribution. All you need to do is go to www.rushcreek.org. Then you click on the giving tab and fill out a form to be able to donate financially. If you click on the "other" tab you can fill in the box "chesnutt mission trip" or "Williams mission trip" (that is my sister's last name.
As always, please keep praying for us through this whole endeavor. Your prayers really lift us up!
I will leave you with another verse. No matter how long it takes us to raise this money for both my sister and I , I will not lose heart because I know its for God's glory we are doing this!
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