It's been 2 weeks since our garage sale
and people keep asking us how it went so this update is overdue. In
short, it went great; better than I expected! We got rid of most of
our stuff, even items that I thought no one would want. What we have
left to get rid of feels manageable. With that being said, if you'd
like to stop by and see what we've got left please feel free and take
whatever you want!!
I went all-out with the signs, hoping
to draw in a larger crowd, and I think it worked! I set up 17 signs
saying “Selling Everything” within a 2 ½ mile radius and spray
painted them bright pink. In heavier traffic areas, I put two signs
next to each other, with one saying that we're becoming missionaries
so that it would gain more attention and explain why we were selling
everything. We got a bunch of comments from people about the signs
and it even piqued the interest of a local newspaper reporter, who
later interviewed us for a story.
The best part about the signs, though,
is that we had many people asking us about our upcoming mission and
sharing with us their experiences of going on foreign mission trips.
A handful of people said they (or a family member) have done
full-time foreign missions for a time, and some people even came JUST
to talk about missions and couldn't have cared less about the garage
sale itself. We had a lot of great conversations with people that we
would have normally never met or spoken with about mission work. It
made each day, exhausting as they were, so blessed.
Prior to the sale, we made fliers and
went around the subdivision to let our neighbors know that we would
be having a huge garage sale that weekend in order to sell all of our
stuff to go on mission. We invited them to hold their own garage
sale the same weekend to take advantage of the traffic coming in.
Our two oldest boys helped us knock on doors and hand out the fliers,
which they had fun doing. Most people were happy to talk to them
(more so than me and Robert) and it made me chuckle thinking about
how it may very well end up being the same way on mission!
At any rate, the night we handed out
the fliers, we received an e-mail from a neighbor who talked to our
8-year-old and said he touched her heart. She asked how she could
help and shared prayer intentions with us. I ended up meeting with
her at the neighborhood park the next week, and it was joy to get to
know her a little bit and share stories.
Another neighbor decided to hold her
own garage sale on one of the days we had ours. She came over later
that day to donate the money she made from it for our mission! We
couldn't believe it! We weren't home when she stopped over so we all
went over to her house to meet her and her husband and to thank them
in-person. It was so nice to talk with them and hear about their
experiences leading mission trips to Mexico with the youth from their church
over the years. Before we left, we prayed with and for each other
out on the front step.
In each of these encounters with
people, it hit me how much I've been missing out by not going outside
my comfort zone to talk to people I come across in day-to-day
activities. I'm naturally quiet and pretty shy so it's difficult for
me to strike up conversations with people I don't know. But I regret
waiting until we're leaving to meet some of our neighbors, now having
met two whom we'd have loved to have developed closer relationships
with. Robert and I kept talking about this each night after the
garage sale – that we met people we totally would have liked to get
together with again if we weren't leaving.
On the bright side, though, we DID have
the opportunity to meet these people whom we never would have had we
not had this garage sale and advertised our upcoming mission. My
hope is that we'll be able to stay in touch with some of them and get
together with them on our visits home.
This past weekend, we had a table set
up after the Masses at the parish we belong to to tell people more
about what we're doing and to promote more vocations to foreign
missions. One of the ladies we talked to hit the nail on the
head when we she said we can take comfort in always staying connected to friends and family, even if we're far apart physically, through Christ as we intercede for each other in prayer. Aside from that, our time apart is a blink of the eye compared to the eternity we'll be together in heaven. I wish I had written it down because she said it much more
eloquently than that, but hopefully you get the idea anyways...
And with that, as we prepare to leave
Minnesota in just a few days and say good-bye to family and friends,
know that we are praying for many of you! If you have specific
intentions you'd like us to lift up, please let us know! We ask for
your prayers for us in return as we move on to this next chapter in
our preparation: a few weeks in Florida with Robert's parents and
the birth of our 7th baby before we start Intake in
September!
