God Cares About Hangers

Today we finished up our first yard sale fundraiser to bring home Journey.  We are only about 3-4 months from bringing her home...and about $22,000 from being fully funded. 

We had so, so much wonderful stuff donated to our yard sale...and more we couldn't even get to pick up.  So we are going to do another one next weekend.  But before this weekend gets away I wanted to take a chance to say thank you to all of the people who donated ANYTHING!  Thanks to you, we made $2000 which paid for us to seal our dossier and will pay part of our second agency payment!  Praise the Lord!  I also wanted to document some really cool things the Lord did this weekend.  

We started out the week watching the weather.  All week it was calling for thunderstorms Friday and Saturday, so we decided to start the yard sale a day earlier on Thursday just in case.  Wednesday the forecast changed to rain Thirsday, Friday AND Saturday.  But since we have a pretty large barn, we decided just to chance it and have most of it inside.  But on Tuesday as we began to sort through all the donations, we got totally overwhelmed.  It was so much and just me and the kids...would we ever get it done?  We felt like we needed help.  Some sweet friends offered to come help on Wednesday, but Trinity woke up with fever.  Just as we were about to feel desperate our sweet neighbor came to help!  And trinity woke up Thursday morning fever free and no sickness at all...and friends came Thursday AND Friday to help!

it was a lesson for me.  The kids and I are studying the book of Numbers right now.  The Israelites were always murmuring, grumbling, complaining.  They had manna, they wanted spicy meat.  They were thirsty.  It was always something.  I'm just like that.  Here God has provided an abundance of donations and I was grumbling because I felt like I needed help, and worrying about the weather.  Oh Lord, thank you for having mercy on me!

Some more backstory that is very important to this is that we have had a recent decrease in income and increase in bills (thanks BCBS health insurance).  So we have been tightening our budget in every way possible but especially grocery wise since it is a large part of our monthly costs.  So when Thursday came, it was time for me to go to the grocery store, but I really wanted to just stretch what we had another day or so.  When I found out we had help coming Thursday and Friday with the yard sale, I wondered how I could stretch what we had, not only for our crew, but also for our helpers.  

So on Thursday it was almost lunchtime and I hadn't even had time to work all that out, but my sister in law came by and offered to bring me lunch.  So I asked her to pick up enough for me and all of our helpers, which thankfully was about 20 of us total, and told her I would give her the money to pay for it.  When she got ready to pay, the cashier asked if he could know what all the food was for and when she told him what we were doing, he gave her a huge discount!  Then as I was thinking ahead to Friday lunch, my friend texted me and said she was bringing lunch with her when she came to help.  Her husbands workplace had a special event and she was able to bring the extras to us!  It actually provided lunch for us for Friday AND Saturday!  What an awesome God we serve!  And the rain?  It never came.  We checked the radar over and over but the rain stayed just west of us all three days!  We couldn't believe it.

As if that all wasn't enough...as I said before, we have been tightening up our budget and one of the things we cut out was dry cleaning Greg's work clothes.  So we have been short on good hangers for his pants because we used to get from the dry cleaners.  On Friday we had someone donate clothes with a ton of nice wooden hangers!  Much better than dry cleaners kind!  You see, the Lord cares about hangers!  

You might think these are silly little things, but they are not.  They are little ways that the Lord shows His love.  But oh, if He never did another thing for us, it wouldn't matter.  He showed His abundant love for us when He gave His only Son on the cross as a ransom for our sin.  Oh He cares for us so, His children.  Are you His?  

John 1:12-14 "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

JESUS CHRIST IS LORD.  RECEIVE HIM AND BELIEVE IN HIS NAME.

Journey Mei...we are coming sweet girl!