Yard Sales: Not for the Faint of Heart

Here is the amazing story of what happened at my yard sale!!

The week of September 19th-25th was completely insane. My support raising yard sale was on Friday and Saturday (24th/25th) so most of

the week was spent preparing for it. We told everyone to try and get their donations to us no later than Wednesday so that we'd have enough time to organize and price it all. By Wednesday night it looked like it was going to be a pretty big yard sale. We'd visited family the previous weekend and gotten a lot of great stuff to sell, and a lot of friends and church family had given too. And then things got even more interesting.

Thursday: Day before the yard sale = SO much to do!! Got a lot done and got even MORE donations (this was turning out to be not just a big yard sale, but an absolutely gigantic one). Also got a huge financial donation from a member of my friend Steph Verenski's church! He's never met me and gave me $1,200, which put me at needing only $2,600!! Mom and I were up until 2am pricing things and getting everything ready for friday.

Africa and Côte d'Ivoire flag cupcakes Hannah made!

Friday: Mom and I were up again at 5:45am to get the yard sale started by 8! As soon as we got a couple tables out at 7, people started coming so we (mom, my sister Hannah and I) had to attend to the crowd and try to get the rest of the stuff out of the garage and set up. It was absolute chaos, for about 2.5 hours there was anywhere from 30-50 people there! By mid-morning, my grandparents came from MD to help out. Around lunch time things settled down and we had an average of 8 or so customers for the rest of the day.

At 5:30, right as we decided it was time to close up for the day, a huge tree branch fell on our yard sale tent!! It smashed a bunch of merchandise and bent one of the metal poles of the tent. Thankfully the only person standing where the tree branch fell (me) sprinted to safety after my mom yelled an incoherent warning. So we spent the rest of the evening figuring out if we could still have the yard sale in the same spot on Saturday, which we thankfully could.

After all this mayhem I counted our earning for the day: $1,600!!!!

Checking out the tree branch that fell on the tent

Saturday: Had a lot more helpers this morning, so thing

s went a lot more smoothly. Not as many people as on Friday, but we had a steady stream of customers all day. Pretty uneventful day in comparison. Towards the end of the day my mom, Hannah, and I counted out the earnings:$1,000!!! Hannah had to remind my mom and I (who's brains had succumbed to exhaustion) that this meant that at first count we had $2,600 for both days. That was only $60 away from EXACTLY what I needed to go!!!!!

Nana and Hannah taking care of the clothing area

So, I think maybe God wants me to go to Côte d'Ivoire this October :) The yard sale was completely exhausting, my mom and I were absolute novices at yard sales, and we got so many donations that we didn't have the time or the space to organize and price it all! Multiple frien

ds (who are also avid yard sale people) said that if we did really well we might make $1,000. Saturday night, I felt a lot like what I imagine the disciples must have felt like after Jesus fed the 5,ooo: complete amazement, it felt like the money was multiplying in my fanny pack, and utter humility, for I could have never done that on my own.

I am so thankful for all the people who gave me (such generous) donations and came to help out on the yard sale, whether to teach my mom and I how to price, help sell hotdogs, or simply buy something. I am especially so grateful to my family members who helped out, it would have been impossible to do it without them. And I know that the average girl doesn't have a mom who would take off of work, stay up until 2, and work both days as if it were her own yard sale.

And so, off I go!! I leave for Colorado the Oct. 24th for training and then my group will head out for Côte d'Ivoire Oct. 28th!!! And so, now is the time of packing, loan deferments, visas, and goodbyes.

To-do lists, surrender, and a yard sale

This is the 6th day that I've known that I have a plane ticket to Cote d'Ivoire this October. These last few days have been interesting and there has been a lot of rearranging. Early last week, I was finally getting used to the idea of staying in the U.S. until next March. I was taking a french class at Shippensburg University, starting to look for jobs, and researching different volunteer opportunities in Chambersburg. I am now in full time support raising mode. I dropped the french course (and thank the Lord, got a full refund!) and have started making seemingly endless to-do lists.

These days have also been ones of surrender. Staying here until March hadn't been my first choice but I had had a plan, I knew what the next 6 months were going to look like and I liked that feeling. Now I'm uncertain: I could be leaving this October or next March. I am back to being in a place where the only thing I can do is trust in Him, because I have no way of knowing what my life will look like in the next few weeks, this Christmas, or next year.

He is teaching me to rest in Him and not in my plans. It is hard, but He is so good.

Like I said, support raising has been kicked into high gear. Right now I am organizing a Fundraising Yard Sale for September 24th and 25th. I'm asking for donations of pretty much anything that can be (re)sold. I'm hoping a lot of people will donate, the bigger this yard sale, the better!!

I'm also revisiting my original list of potential supporters, trying to think of churches and organizations I haven't thought of before. It would be amazing if most of my next few sundays were filled with visiting churches to talk about my future ministry.

If you know any person, organization, or church that might be interested in supporting what I'm trying to do, please, direct them to my blog, send me their info, or send them mine. I would really appreciate it!!

Like I said in my last post, I have exactly $5020 left to raise. This can feel like a LOT of money, but on Sunday my mom talked to a friend at church who once raised $40,000 in five weeks when he was a missionary!!!

October Departure!! (and the support raising continues)

I really do not know where to begin. I haven't been able to update here because I haven't known what to say. I still don't know how to succinctly describe these last two weeks. They have been stressful, some days I have been making plans about staying here until next March because it didn't look like I was going to make the support raising deadline. Other days, I would hear new information from JourneyCorps and wonder if I could actually leave this October. What I am learning is that God is in control (a truth that's easy to say, much harder to live by).

Some of you probably saw that last week that if I had raised 90% by this past Tuesday then I would be able to leave in October (otherwise I would continue support raising until next March). Yesterday I got an email from JourneyCorps saying that while I currently do not have 90% they still bought a ticket for me to leave late October. As in next month, NOT next March.

I have until I leave to raise 100% of my funds. Thats about

6 weeks to raise $5,020.

In the last month or so, I have had a lot of new deadlines, and they have been a bit confusing. However, this is not just another deadline. There is a plane ticket with my name on it and it's for next month. It still hasn't truly sunk in that next month I will be leaving for Africa, right now all I can think about is support raising and practicing french and loan deferment and packing and planning and my eternal to-do list. I would definitely appreciate any prayers for God's peace and guidance. I am in desperate need of them.

These next 6 weeks will be interesting, keep a look out because I will be updating about my support raising adventures, the newest one being an upcoming yard sale!