$1000 Yard Sale for Missions

We had a yard sale this past Saturday to raise money for our friend's upcoming mission trip to Rwanda. We, the Longworths, hosted the event, yet over 20 individuals/families contributed time and stuff.

I've got to share a couple of the fun stories from the experience...

First off- I received TEN different "deliveries" on FRIDAY! That was awesome. We thought we had a lot of stuff before that! Thanks, guys! Friday night, we had a big group of folks helping us set stuff out. It took 2-3 hours for 5-6 people to get the job done. I think we had more folks at one point. I can't imagine how long it would have taken Bill & I to have done it all ourselves!! Also glad we decided to set stuff out on Friday night!!

One of the things that was donated was a recliner. Bill took it upon himself to be the guard of the sale and sleep in the recliner that night. Our neighbor arrived home from playing bridge that night, around midnight, and went shopping, since Bill was in the yard anyway. :-) We like to share the story that our first customer was at MIDNIGHT. :-) People started shopping as early as 6:30 AM on Saturday. I was glad I'd decided to go ahead and get up early! (If you know me, then you know that I don't get up early for much. Yup. 6:15 folks. 6:15. Miracles do happen!)

One of our first customers of the day was a guy headed to work. He stopped and paid for the recliner, but said he had to go clock-in before he could come back! He did. He ended up visiting our sale 3 times and buying some of our bigger items.

We had a VCR...looked new in box. Anyhow, we couldn't find the remote that went with it. If it had a remote, it may have mistakenly went away with a couple of TVs sold earlier in the day. When asked, we said it cost $8. This guy said that was too high since it didn't have a remote. We went down to $5. He wanted to pay $2. No way, we said. The next guy who walked up bought the thing for $8. There were four sales on our block. A few minutes later we saw guy number 1 carring a VCR from the neighbors yard. Buzz is that he paid $1 for it there. Good for him. Glad we got our $8.
The next story involves cookies. We had a little bake sale with cookies, brownies, a cake, cold drinks, etc. at the "check-out." We had a bunch of "add-on" sales with these. And for folks who couldn't find anything else to get, they often bought cookies or a coke to help out. This one group of ladies bought a couple baggies of cookies ($.25 each) and were headed to the car. I'm not sure if they ate them on the way to the car or what, but they were soon back at the table buying another set of baggies. Next thing we knew, they were back and just bought a plate full of Liz's cookies!!
Last little comment from me...
We had A LINE at the sale. Yup. People actually had to wait in line to "check out" at one point!! We got everyone to help with that and I think there was still a line (up to 4 people deep). Thankfully, we had friends helping us with that too!!!

Yippee! Ain't God good! Praise God for the wonderful work He did on Saturday. We may be "professionals" or good at "wheeling and dealing" but the LORD is who really did all the work. And YES - we did raise over $1,000 for Emily's trip!!!