"Maybe you prayed too hard!!!"

I received a phone call from a church member on Wednesday night that went like this,

"Lynsey, are you still having a yard sale THIS Saturday?"

"Yes, we are still planning on having it."

"Well, I am at the church and I was going to put my donations in the fellowship hall and there is nothing here."

"Don't worry, we have some stuff in our garage that people have donated and we moved a few things from the fellowship hall to our Sunday school classroom earlier in the week.  I am sure we will have more things come in.  Just keep praying!"

"Okay...I'll do that!"

I will have to admit that I was a little nervous when I got off the phone.  I asked Adam, "What are we going to do if we don't have enough stuff to sell?"  So I just kept praying that God would move people to donate things...and I prayed, and prayed, and prayed.  Then, I went to church to meet a few hardworking volunteers on Thursday night at 6pm and I cannot even explain to you how much stuff we had!  We had stuff in the fellowship hall, stuff in our Sunday school classroom, stuff spilling out into the hallways, stuff on trucks...we had so much stuff I was overwhelmed with what to do with it all!  Everyone kept asking me if I was okay.  I think I had that deer-in-headlights look on my face.  My nervousness about not having enough to sell quickly turned into nervousness that we wouldn't be able to get it all out to sell it!  We (I say we, like I was one of the men doing it!) moved 40 tables (that is EVERY table in our church building) into the fellowship hall to lay stuff out on and it still wasn't enough room!  This is what the room looked like on Thursday night when we left...

And we didn't even have everything out yet!  Grandpa Owen came over on Friday night and he asked me...
"Lynsey, what do you think of all this?"

"Well...I am a little overwhelmed!  Owen, I prayed and prayed and asked God to please move people to donate things to this yardsale."

"Well, Lynsey, I think you might have prayed to hard!" ha ha!

We still had not touched about 1/3 of it!  We hadn't moved any of the clothes (and there had to be atleast 1,000 peices of clothes)!  We left at 11pm on Thursday  night and I could not sleep, I was so nervous we weren't going to be able to get it all out on Friday night!  Friday, we started again at 6pm and we worked and worked and worked and when we left at 11:30, it was atleast organized chaos!  We resigned ourselves to the fact that all of the clothes could not be hung up (although they hung up a ton of it) and there was no way we were going to be able to price everything...there was just too much! 

We arrived very chippper (well, atleast some of us!) at 6 am and began to move a lot of the stuff outside so that the room wasn't so crowded.  We worked on the bake sale stuff and then at 6:50am we welcomed our first customer!  And they kept coming, and coming and coming,  until after 2pm!  We never had a time when there were less than 10 people shopping!  There was such a long line at one point that there were 4 of us just taking money! 

It was an AMAZING day and I give all praise and glory to Jesus!  We asked him to move people to donate things and he gave us so much stuff we couldn't even price it all!  We asked him to bring people to buy the stuff and he brought hundreds of people, so many that after we had totally packed up at 3:15, there were still women looking through boxes of clothes!  We prayed that we would make $1,600 because that is what we needed to submit our dossier to Ghana and he gave us over double what we asked for!  All total, we made $3,326...at a yardsale!?!?  Who makes $3,000 at a yardsale???  All I know is that we covered this event in prayer and this was just another confirmation that this is exactly what he wants us to do!

I want to thank EVERY person who helped make this day such a huge success!  Thank you to everyone who donated stuff and baked goodies...and then came back to buy someone elses stuff!  I would name everyone but I am sure that I would miss someone!  Thank you to Scott, Joshua, and Bruce who moved every one of those 40 tables and a ton of stuff from different locations to the church.  Thank you to Aunt Janice who came to drop a few things off and stayed for hours to help (mainly because I think she felt like I was in over my head...and she was right!).  Thank you to Erica and Roxanne for helping to empty boxes and boxes of stuff!  Thank you to Hazel who had a plan!  Thank you to Kathy who was there before I was on Thursday and Friday and then left Friday night at 11pm and went home and made cookies for the bake sale before she came back at 6am on Saturday!!!  Thank you to Peggy, Sarah, Lauren, Jason  and Mom who hung up clothes until they couldn't hang up anymore (if you go to their houses and their clothes are on the floor, you can blame me!  They probably never want to hang anything else up as long as they live!)!  Thank you to Nicole for all the hangers!!!  Thank you to Stephanie, Frank and Cindy for pricing hundreds of individual items!  Thank you to Ashley and Caleb for making cards...they sold really well!  Thank you to our parents who played with our kids while we did all of this (I know it was a joy but still, we thank you!).  Thank you to Leigh for making all the bake sale stuff look pretty and for the coffee!  Thank you to Wayne, Sam and Roger who came right in time to help clean everything up!  Thank you to every person who prayed for this day!  And thank you to Jesus who gave us the idea :-)  Love you guys!