We recently decided to do one last fundraising endeavor to help raise funds for travel costs on our upcoming trip to Korea. We hosted our second Adoption Fundraiser Garage Sale! Our first sale was 2 years ago, and was when we were in the inital stage of the process. Now, that we are in the home stretch, we decided to host another sale. Since early May, we have been collecting donations from our amazing friends and family! I was so amazed at what nice, quality items were coming in, that I knew this was going to the best sale of the summer! For 6 weeks, our lower level family room became "garage sale headquarters" and started filling quite fast with donations. Items were priced and sorted, and boxes of items began stacking and overtaking the room. I have to say, I really appreciate my kids graciously losing their toy room for 6 weeks while we prepared for the sale. (Needless to say, there was a huge pillow fight and wrestling match with all of us in the family room the day after the sale!! )
I purchased some used racks, and was graciously donated about 300 hangers from Cabelas - and got to work! I had a sweet friend even go out and hunt for clothing dividers, and have them made up for my racks, exactly as I needed the sizes divided up - what a huge blessing! One day during my prep, I had my monster 15' double sided rack go crashing over in the driveway by a wind gust. I was tempted to give up, shut the garage door and go crawl in bed, but instead, I dusted everything off and re-sorted and hung it all - and 6 hours later, it was back to normal. I learned the hard way that I needed sand bags to weight down my racks!
After a month of preparations, and lots of sweet friends coming and helping price & sort with me - we were ready! Our sale was last Thurs-Saturday, and was a huge success. The first day was very busy, and we sold $2,200 worth of donated items! The amazing thing is that we didn't have any really expensive items in the sale - the highest priced items were $40. It was amazing how quickly it added up! All said and done, we raised $3,003 for little Will's adoption!!! We actually had to count it all twice, because we thought for sure we had made a huge mistake in our counting. No mistake - God is GOOD!!
It was so fun to have so many of our sweet friends come strolling up our driveway, showing their support and doing a little shopping! I was also so blessed by how many people were friends-of-friends, meaning our friends were telling others about the sale - and sharing it through Facebook, which drew even more shoppers.
And, whenever you have an "Adoption Fundraiser" sale, you get lots and lots of questions/comments/stories from your shoppers about adoption. I was really honored by the number of people that shared with me that they had been adopted, or how adoption had touched their family.
All of the money raised will go towards our travel expenses. Tickets to Korea are currently between $2,000-$2,500. With the money raised, we now have enough for 2 adult tickets, a lap ticket for Will, and 5 night guest stay at the agency. Our goal for the sale was to raise $2,500 - which God pushed us way above and beyond! We were really hoping to be able to have our travel costs all up-front, and not be added to the remaining adoption costs yet to pay. We still have a ways to go financially, but God has proven Himself faithful every single step and will continue to!!
Lastly - we are anticipating our travel call should be very soon. It's looking that we'll very likely travel in early August. We can hardly wait!!! We'll keep everyone posted, as I hear more from our agency!!
Thank you again for ALL of the love and support with our fundraiser!! We are so blessed by our amazing family and friends!!
