Kellers in the Caribbean: Garage Sale Mania!

Well we were truly blessed this past weekend! We decided to have a garage sale to get rid of some items before we left which turned into a way bigger project than we anticipated. We decided to make our garage sale into a fundraiser. We spread the word to our friends, family and fellow church members and oh my did people deliver! We were overwhelmed (in a good way) by the amount of donations we received. Our garage sale was a HUGE success and we raised approximately $2500!!! We give a big thank you to all who donated their items and time.

Getting ready to organize and price everthing...

Not only were we amazed by the amount we raised, we were amazed at how great our God is and how he sends special people into our lives...even at a garage sale. We met so many wonderful people who stopped by to shop. So many were interested in what we were going to be doing in St. Vincent and provided encouraging words. Here are a few stories of some people we met.

A young woman from our neighborhood stopped by and purchased some items after talking to her she shared with me that her church takes a yearly mission trip to Mexico and they take tennis shoes to donate to the people. We had a TON of clothing and shoes so we gladly packed up all the tennis shoes we had left to donate to another good cause, it was cool to think that shoes from our mission garage sale would go to help missions in other parts of the world.

Another man stopped by looking for clown socks because he has a clown ministry and he was preforming that weekend but he forgot his suitcase. What is so cool about this is that my mom and my little sister have just started preforming as clowns as a ministry as well. This was such a blessing for my mom because he was able to give her a lot of resources that she has been trying to locate but had been unsuccessful until then. Again God is so good how he connects us to people :)

A young man in our neighborhood stopped by looking for some clothes because one of his close friend's house just burnt down and he lost everything so he wanted to send him a care package. Luckily EK and him were the same size and EK put some of his clothes in the sale so we were happy to help by donating those clothes to someone in need.

And one of my favorite stories is about a 12-year-old boy named Gregory who lives in our neighborhood. I have seen Gregory around the neighborhood before, he rides his bike with a red basket on the back and is a friendly boy. I am not for certain by my guess it that Gregory has Autism. Gregory was curious what we were doing and came and shopped at our sale. We told him he could take a few items from the 25 cent and 50 cent tables which he was excited to do, he even picked out something for his mom. He took a few items went home and returned about 15 minutes later. It is important to note that we had a few donation buckets with signs explaining what the fundraiser was for. Very few people had donated anything extra that day, maybe a dollar here or a quarter there. However, Gregory came back on his blue bicycle and pulled a zip lock bag out of his red basket. There were several $1 bills and quarters in his bag and he dumped all of it in our donation bucket, Gregory gave us $10 as a donation, our biggest donation of the day :). I proceeded to tell him he did not have to give us all his money which he replied "oh its just my allowance money I will get more." To be honest I had to take his donation inside because he generosity brought tears to my eyes. I think Gregory humbled us all that day to see what blessings can come from one child.

Counting our profit!

We again want to say thank you to all who helped us pull this garage sale together, to everyone who donated items we thank you! We want to give a special thanks to my mom who allowed all of this to happen at her house and that she had to park outside of her garage for a month because we packed it full of stuff :) and she worked hard all weekend. Thank you to my dad who helped move several items and was there during the garage sale to lend a helping hand wherever he was needed we could not have done it without him, he also got some great items from his job (shooting supplies) which were a great hit and made a lot of money for us! Thank you to my stepmom, Cheryl, my grandma, Gwynette, and our dear family friend Echo who helped set things up; your help made the process much less stressful and overwhelming. My husband did a wonderful job as well working hard moving things and willing to do whatever was asked of him, what a great guy! And thank you to all of our family and friends who stopped by to say hello it helped make this event memorable and special. We are so blessed to have wonderful family and friends to surround us during this time to offer love and support.

In exactly four weeks from today we will be flying to St. Vincent!