Monday, September 5, 2011

Blessings!

We have just been inundated with blessings this weekend!  


We held a fundraiser garage sale to help raise adoption expenses, and WOW!  Were we ever blessed!  First, we asked friends, family, and church family if they would be willing to donate items to our sale, and we had a MOUNTAIN of stuff come in!  Thank you so much to all of you who shared your bounty with us!  It made a huge difference (we really didn't have enough stuff to bother putting on a sale, and we are so appreciative of the donations!)  


And then we had to come up with a location for the sale.  We live way out of town, and we have no parking or turnaround spot or garage, or anything very conducive to garage-sale-friendly location.  So Derek's grandparents saved our day with that issue.  They donated the funds to rent the Lion's Club building in town for the weekend!  That was SO NICE, because it was indoors, it was huge, there is a playground for the kids to play on, and it came with enough tables to actually display all the stuff nicely.  This only shows about half of the sale:
I just can't tell you how dear and generous Derek's Grandma and Papa are.  They are the sort of people who are always offering to help before a person even asks.  I just love them so much.  They are the grandparents I never had, and I treasure them.  They were also at the sale with us most of the weekend, helping to hold down the fort.  And they brought us pizza for lunch!  They had more energy than me this weekend, I think.  Not bad for 82 years young, right?  


The kids set up a lemonade stand outside the building, and had great success!  Who could resist this cuteness?
And I think Isaac would make a great businessman.  He was not a bit shy to talk to strangers all day, as they went inside, and then again as they left :) telling them about what he is doing and why, how much we need to raise, and trying to talk them into not just lemonade, but snacks, and cans of pop, and maybe snacks to take home for later, too!  Too funny!  He did great.  


And long after the littles lost interest, he was still out there.  For hours and hours my dear boy sat in the sun, always smiling and eager, running inside after each sale to tell us his new total.  He was definitely in his element.  My son, the businessman.



And the sale went great.  I had been praying for $890 in profits from the sale.  We happen to need $890 in the next few days in order to complete our next step in the adoption process, and I asked God to provide it.  People told me I probably wouldn't make more than $100, and that it was going to be a waste of time, but I prayed, and GOD ANSWERED!  It was amazing!  Between the total from the sale, the donations from the lemonade stand, and three (YES, THREE!) very generous donations that were made over the weekend, we now have a grand total of $896 !!!  (I figure God decided to include the cost of shipping our paperwork, just to bless our socks off!)  


So thank you SO MUCH to my dear, amazing friend Randi in Norway, and my beautiful long-lost sister Diane (and my equally beautiful niece Becky . . . that actually makes FOUR donations, doesn't it?)  Not to mention another incredible donation by a sweet friend of my mother, a lady whom I met once briefly a year ago and whose heart was also moved to donate out of what little she had. See, so many donations that I am losing count!  All of you, if you are reading this, THANK YOU!  I am just in awe, and in tears right now, writing this, because I know that these donations all came from people who love us (and love children they have not even met) enough to give out of what they have!  I treasure these donations even more, because I know that these days, nobody has much to spare.  And yet they chose to share because they see the worth of this rescue mission!


And all of this means that we are now busy filling out USCIS paperwork and ready to move on to the next step of the process. Our homestudy is (finally) almost complete.  We had a wonderful second visit on Thursday.  The draft was supposedly being written over the weekend, so we hope it will be completed in the very near future.  Then we will be able to put a check for $890 in the mail with that application and then things should really start moving forward.  I just cannot tell you how much I want to go to my son's country right now.  RIGHT NOW!  But soon . . . it is going to happen soon.  All thanks to the many, many blessings that poured in over the weekend.  God is SO GOOD, isn't He?







1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am so happy for you! My daughter and I have had one garage sale and made around $400. and we're going to have another one here in a few weeks to see if we can sell the rest of the donated items we have. It all helps so very much!!