Beware: Long but super awesome and powerful blog/testimony ahead!
Where do I even start? There’s just so much to share with all of you! So, uh, let’s start with a little background, so I can catch you up on why all of this was such a big deal. Okay? K!
11 days ago, I found out my $9,000 deadline was a month before I thought it was, and I had to scramble to put a fundraiser together, and send out the rest of my support letters. I decided that having a yard sale was the best fundraiser I could do in such a short time frame, so I started announcing on Facebook: “I WILL TAKE YOUR STUFF!!!” And boy did i start getting donations! The very first donation I received was all the “left-overs” from a friend’s multi-family yardsale, and it filled half my garage! (the half that wasn’t filled by our own junk, of course!) So by the time all the other donations started arriving, we had to either squeeze them into the garage, or just leave them sitting on our driveway. We even had people asking what everything was for, and we were able to tell them what I was up to!
Miracle 1: Almost too many donations for the yard sale!
It literally took us an entire day to set up all of the stuff we had donated to the yard sale, and we weren’t even able to pullout the stuff from the garage. The entire first day of the sale was purely off of the donations that didn’t fit inside our garage, and didn’t include anything from my family.
Miracle 2: We made over $2800 in two and a half days of yardsaling.
Throughout the entire sale, I had people asking about what the yardsale was for, why I would go on a trip like this, and telling me to be safe while I was there. Every time I talked to someone else about being a missionary for the next year of my life, I got even more excited and energetic about my Jesus and what He is doing in my life! They would ask me tons of questions, and end up making donations to my trip, by rounding up their tabs, or writing checks in addition to giving me cash for their purchases! I was SO in awe of the favor that God gave me, and I loved chatting with everyone that stopped by. Needless to say, I had SO much fun all three days, and I was blessed beyond measure by the support that I received!
Miracle 3: The presence of The Lord was very present.
By mid-morning on the second day, I began to feel these weird chills and tingles in my feet, ankles, and eventually my entire legs. I mentioned this to my mom, and I told that it seriously felt like I was walking through something every time I traveled on the lawn or driveway. She said that she would pray about it and see if she felt like it was something spiritual, and I immediately knew: God’s presence was so thick and tangible, that I was literally walking through it. I had a picture of what it looked like, and it was of a wide, lazy river that wound through the yardsale sight, and over our property. It was such a vivid an amazing experience, and I can honestly say that I have never felt the presence of the Holy Spirit like I did then, and the rest of the days we did the sale.
Miracle 4: God used people to minister to me.
In the items that we had available to sell, there was a beautiful princess canopy (the kind you hang over a bead or chair, and they surround you). We had been asking for $70 for it because of its initial expensive price. The first day we had multiple offers for it at around $20, but I knew I wasn’t supposed to let go of it yet. On the second day, late in the afternoon, a woman stopped by the sale on her way home from work. She immediately saw the canopy, walked over it, and started touching it with admiration. I walked over to her and started talking about it, and she told me a story about her little princess that she has at home. I knew right then and there that I was supposed to let her have it. I told her that we had it sold for $20 at the end of the day, so if she could do more than that, she could have it. She smiled really big, said that she would take it, and I felt a peace in my heart.
A couple minutes later when she was paying for everything she picked out, she asked my what church I went to. I answered, and we started talking about Jesus.
Then she started prophesying over me. She said that I wasn’t to give up or stop fighting. – I had recently been struggling with if I was supposed to go on this trip because I didn’t think I would make the deadline, and I was struggling with my own perceptions of how money is made/raised. I wasn’t sure if this was actually going to happen, and I wasn’t sure if I should keep going, or just stop…. anyway that answered my question!
She also told me,”When you come back, He will say stand and take your place.” – one of the big reasons why I am going on this trip, is because I had no dissection in my life. I had no goals, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but I felt like I could figure all of that out on this trip. So when she said that, I knew it was right. Not only will I be used to do crazy awesome things while I’m over-seas, but I will also be given authority somewhere, and find my place. Um, pretty dang exciting.
