When you say YES

"When you say YES to adoption, you are saying YES to enter the suffering of the orphan, and that suffering includes WAITING FOR YOU TO GET TO THEM. I promise you, their suffering is worse than yours. We say YES to the tears, YES to the longing, YES to the maddening process, YES to the money, YES to hope, YES to the screaming frustration of it all, YES to going the distance through every unforeseen discouragement and delay. Do not imagine that something outside of "your perfect plan" means you heard God wrong. There is NO perfect adoption. EVERY adoption has snags. We Americans invented the "show me a sign" or "this is a sign" or "this must mean God is closing a door" or "God must not be in this because it is hard," but all that is garbage. You know what's hard? Being an orphan. They need us to be champions and heroes for them, fighting like mad to get them home. So we will. We may cry and rage and scream and wail in the process, but get them home we will." 

--Jen Hatmaker

Kristie, the kids and I would like to thank everyone who participated, organized, sorted, donated, bought and stopped by to encourage us during our two day yard/garage/porch sale. Friday was rain-free.  Saturday rained the whole time, so we opened the garage, and we put kids' stuff on the front porch.  I manned the garage while Kristie handled the porch.  We were texting each other back and forth with updates.  Sarah sold snacks in the rain.  Rebekah helped out the whole time as well.  Rachel spent the night with a friend.  And Seth played cars.  Overall, it was a huge success!  We had some customers tell us to keep the change from their purchases, while we had others write generous checks.  Thank you to those that did that for us and Warrior.  

Total, we netted over $1150 dollars (and sold 9 Warrior Necklaces) in those two days.  Every dollar will be turned in to our matching grant, which will be doubled to over $2300.  Our agency will invoice the grant organization directly for our next round of fees in a few weeks.  

While we still have lots of stuff remaining, at least I can walk in my garage now.  We will be opening up our garage again perhaps next week to raise additional funds.

I was able to have dinner last night with a friend and former coworker who lost his daughter on Christmas Day of last year.  What a blessing to catch up with him after the terrible tragedy that his family went through a few months ago.

I was home in time to watch Orb win the Kentucky Derby with the family.