Humbled and in Awe: The Garage Sale

We are greatly humbled by the outpouring of support that we saw during the garage sale.  We saw more treasures than we could handle by ourselves, people spending hours with us to get things priced and sorted, friends and family spending the day at our house to make sure things got sold and hundreds of people coming by to make purchases or to donate more.

Awed by the weather and timing of everything, the week leading up to the garage sale was a bit of a blur. Most of the week people were dropping things off at the house.  Thankfully, Jenn was able to get a lot of pricing and sorting done beforehand so all we needed to do was keep up with what came in.  Due to the generosity of so many, even that was a challenge but a welcomed one.

Again, thanks to many friends we were able to get pretty much everything priced and moved upstairs to the main level.  Yes, we had so many treasures that at least half of it was in the basement.

God provided everything we needed that day.  On Friday, a friend made multiple trips out to houses to bring back donations but also much needed tables.  At the same time as we planned our day of staffing, at the last minute a couple people stepped up to fill crucial time slots, specifically set up.  That morning Jenn and I woke up around 5 am and before we could finish breakfast our first volunteer had arrived.  We started moving boxes and furniture out of the house and garage.

As we set up for the day, more helpers continued to arrive.  As we brought the last piece of furniture out of the garage, I looked at my watch and it was 8 am exactly.  Time to open up.  Another blessing.

We had surrounded the yard in caution tape and that worked really well.  All of the people ready to shop waited patiently outside of the tape for us to open up.

When we did finally cut the tape, one shopper commented it was like the running of the bulls.  The rest of the day was a wonderful experience.  We met many people who had an adoption story of their own. The sun shown all day and it did get a little warm but the only casualties were a few cupcakes and candles.  

All told, we took in around $3200 -- a major blessing.  Early on one of us talked about doing another sale with anything that remained.  That wont be happening. :) Purple Heart has already picked up the leftovers and we have our house back.  

There are many things about the day that I won't soon forget but this one touched me more than others.  We had created a couple donation jars for the sale.  One of the jars was on the counter in our kitchen.  Before leaving, a friend who was helping sort dropped some money in.  J saw this and quickly ran upstairs to get his bank.  He took all the money he had and put it in the jar.  I asked him about it and he said "I want to make sure we can bring our sisters home."

Here are a couple more pictures from the day.