We had our garage sale fundraiser last Saturday (May 4th).
It went so good!
A special thanks to all of our family for helping us last Friday and Saturday! We couldn't have done it without y'all. And thanks to everyone who donated to the sale!! You guys are awesome!
We raised approximately....
$ 2,000
Seriously... Once again we stand amazed at God's continued provision for our adoption.
We stand amazed at the overwhelming amount of support we have.
Thank You!
I have a sweet, sweet story to share from the garage sale.
My "sweet kiss" from God.
I guess the story can begin on Thursday evening of last week.
This nasty little emotion called "doubt" began to creep in. It raised it's head as the garage sale neared.
Doubt over what? Tons of things.
It began to engulf me.
I told Lee about it. Told him that satan's attacks were full on.
He prayed over me. Prayed for our family. Prayed for our garage sale. Then prayed for me again.
Friday evening I rushed in from work, greeting family members and finishing up all the last minute garage sale stuff. Lee had picked up our Africa cookies that sweet Rhiannon Bethea made for us to sell. I immediately looked for them when I got home and was SO thankful to see that she already had them arranged in a basket, because I wasn't sure what I was going to put them in to make them look cute.
I snapped a picture of these precious cookies.
Saturday was the garage sale.
God met me there. He met me in small ways throughout the day.
He exceeded my expectations for the sale.
And then in the perfect moment He grabbed my attention.
The sale was over. All of our family had gone home except Lee's cousin, Sha.
We were standing in the kitchen talking.
As I listened to Lee and Sha talking, I glanced over and saw the basket of cookies sitting on our bench.
"That's strange" I thought. I stared a moment longer at the cookies before speaking out loud.
"Look at that cookie basket. The tissue paper is red, green and yellow. Those are Ethiopia's flag colors."
Lee and Sha turned to look.
"It sure is" replied Lee.
"Do you think Rhiannon meant to do that?" I asked.
Lee replied, "Abby, probably! Creative people always do stuff like that."
True, I thought to myself. But that is REAL creative, especially not to mention it and assume I would notice.
I dropped it.
For a few hours.
But I couldn't let it go. There was something "more" to me about the 3 colors she had decorated the basket with. So around 8 o'clock that night I wrote Rhiannon a text and asked if she knew that those 3 colors were Ethiopian colors.
Her response?
"No way!?!?!"
"Totally God... :)"
She proceeded to tell me the "story" behind selecting those colors for the basket.
She said she had left over green paper from Christmas, but wanted to make the basket "stand out" so she ran to the dollar store for more paper. The only colors they had were red, yellow and lime green. Since she already had green, she just bought the red and yellow :)
Mmmm... my heart was filled.
God was the creative one.
He always is.
If you don't know about God's crazy, excessive attention to detail - read the Bible cover to cover.
In fact, He is so detail oriented that we miss most of it!
I even have to skip some chapters in the Bible because of all the details God desired for the temple, the sacrifices, etc.
And He cares about the details of my life.
On Sunday, I realized that God had invited me to enter into the doubt I was having earlier in the week.
He allowed me to enter in to the emotions... because He desired to meet me there.
He desired to prove Himself faithful to me.
He desired to remind me of His ever constant presence in our lives.
He desired to confirm His call for us to adopt once again (for the millionth time) because He knows I need it.
I was thankful He had allowed me to enter in.
Here are the pictures of the Ethiopian flag, the cookie basket after the garage sale, and the cookie basket during the garage sale.
No, I did not rearrange the tissue paper to match the flag! That just happened to be how Rhiannon laid it :)
Oh and the cookies were blue in the middle (just like the blue in the flag).
It was in front of our face all day and we didn't notice :)
Pretty neat, huh?
This is one of the only pictures I snapped during the sale.
God is pretty great :))
I did not take any pictures at the sale (yes I regret this), but some family members snapped at least a few.
Here is a side by side of Miller and Blakely (our niece) last year and this year at the garage sale!
They've grown so much :((
Thanks for following us!
Saturday was the garage sale.
God met me there. He met me in small ways throughout the day.
He exceeded my expectations for the sale.
And then in the perfect moment He grabbed my attention.
The sale was over. All of our family had gone home except Lee's cousin, Sha.
We were standing in the kitchen talking.
As I listened to Lee and Sha talking, I glanced over and saw the basket of cookies sitting on our bench.
"That's strange" I thought. I stared a moment longer at the cookies before speaking out loud.
"Look at that cookie basket. The tissue paper is red, green and yellow. Those are Ethiopia's flag colors."
Lee and Sha turned to look.
"It sure is" replied Lee.
"Do you think Rhiannon meant to do that?" I asked.
Lee replied, "Abby, probably! Creative people always do stuff like that."
True, I thought to myself. But that is REAL creative, especially not to mention it and assume I would notice.
I dropped it.
For a few hours.
But I couldn't let it go. There was something "more" to me about the 3 colors she had decorated the basket with. So around 8 o'clock that night I wrote Rhiannon a text and asked if she knew that those 3 colors were Ethiopian colors.
Her response?
"No way!?!?!"
"Totally God... :)"
She proceeded to tell me the "story" behind selecting those colors for the basket.
She said she had left over green paper from Christmas, but wanted to make the basket "stand out" so she ran to the dollar store for more paper. The only colors they had were red, yellow and lime green. Since she already had green, she just bought the red and yellow :)
Mmmm... my heart was filled.
God was the creative one.
He always is.
If you don't know about God's crazy, excessive attention to detail - read the Bible cover to cover.
In fact, He is so detail oriented that we miss most of it!
I even have to skip some chapters in the Bible because of all the details God desired for the temple, the sacrifices, etc.
And He cares about the details of my life.
On Sunday, I realized that God had invited me to enter into the doubt I was having earlier in the week.
He allowed me to enter in to the emotions... because He desired to meet me there.
He desired to prove Himself faithful to me.
He desired to remind me of His ever constant presence in our lives.
He desired to confirm His call for us to adopt once again (for the millionth time) because He knows I need it.
I was thankful He had allowed me to enter in.
Here are the pictures of the Ethiopian flag, the cookie basket after the garage sale, and the cookie basket during the garage sale.
No, I did not rearrange the tissue paper to match the flag! That just happened to be how Rhiannon laid it :)
Oh and the cookies were blue in the middle (just like the blue in the flag).
It was in front of our face all day and we didn't notice :)
Pretty neat, huh?
This is one of the only pictures I snapped during the sale.
God is pretty great :))
I did not take any pictures at the sale (yes I regret this), but some family members snapped at least a few.
Here is a side by side of Miller and Blakely (our niece) last year and this year at the garage sale!
They've grown so much :((
Thanks for following us!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks so much for your comments!