He Can Move a Mountain - HALFWAY THERE!

WOW! Blessings abound!  What an amazing week!  All week, countless people poured out their love for us and for V*ktor by donating their garage sale items and their precious time to help sort through it all.  I tried to keep a list of all the wonderful people donating their belongings to our cause, and I came up with 25.  I know that there were many more than that who dropped things off when I wasn't even around!
I have to say that my Mommy group is OUT of this world!  You see, this last week (before planning the garage sale) I had already taken a job that kept me busy for 10 1/2 hours during the day all week. So, I was only able to work on the garage sale at night. My Mommy friends helped in all the planning, made all the signs for the sale, put up fliers, prayed for us, and donated their own items. As if that wasn't enough, when I was unavailable all day Friday, they went to the store and spent SIX HOURS cleaning, organizing, accepting donations, and making some sales to people who walked in. So, when I arrived on Friday night, everything that had already arrived was ready to go !  They are truly an amazing group of unselfish, wonderful, giving people who I am blessed to have as my friends :)
I met Brian and the kids at the store Friday night and we brought over everything that had been in our garage. We started getting the extra stuff all organized, putting out the Tshirts, and trying to remember what else we needed to do!  My friend Mary from about an hour away, who is also adopting from Ukraine, came down with her kids to help as well :)  She arrived after 9, put her kids to bed at our house with Brian, then she and I headed back to the store to unload all the stuff she had brought along!  We got back around midnight, printed out some things, and got a little bit of sleep!
Yesterday was truly a miraculous, blessed day! We had soooooooooooooo much support from our community, church, family, and friends.  I really wish I had a way to personally thank everyone who was a part of it. Mary and I arrived at 6:45 and got to work.  Brian came later once all the kids woke up.  My Mommy friends were back out to help with the sale that morning about the time it got really busy. Another friend's daughter wanted to make brownies. A and Mary's daughter Kelly sat out front to sell pop and brownies. They would get soooooo tickled when someone walking by just gave them a donation and didn't want anything to eat or drink.  When another kid joined them and they ran out of brownies, she ran across the street to the grocery store to buy a box of brownies!  LOL!  It worked:) They kept selling!
A few moments really stood out to me - the three ladies who came in to buy 3 hats and gave $50 - the lady with tears in her eyes as she dropped off donation items and said how wonderful this was - the lady who came in and wanted a T-shirt but wasn't sure if she had enough... We said it was close enough, but she continued to count out quarters for the last dollar to $17.  Then, as she slipped out the door, she handed me a sealed envelope... with $100 in it. - the couple who really wanted the beautiful rug, but wondered if $40 was "too cheap" for it. (We gladly sold it to them and felt so blessed!) - my sweet son A and all the other kids who worked so tirelessly and were very good all day wanting to do their part to bring V home...             Just the overall emotionally, mentally, physically exhausting process that was so worth every second.  All the local shoppers came in excited about the cause of bringing V*ktor home.  The out-of-towners were interested to hear all about it, too! There were many people who just stopped in to make a donation and didn't even look at the sale. Others gave much more than an item was worth. Some truly had a need for something and maybe wouldn't have been able to get it if we had things priced above their budgets.  It was just a day of blessings for everyone!

We had a lot of laughs, too :)  My favorite was the leisure pants.  Apparently, my friend J said to just donate the leisure suit pants to Goodwill because nobody would buy them.  I said it's almost Halloween! They'll sell!  She didn't believe me :)  So, at around 4pm when they still hadn't sold, it was a little slow... We decided to make it a featured item and put a sign on it that it was an auction. Got some laughs but no bids. So, the pants (and a few other pieces of clothing) were made into "Scarecrow Ned." The kids loved it! Brian said that if he didn't sell, we were putting him on J's porch - lol!  No worries, Ned sold!  Though now, J has an awesome idea for another fundraiser with some of the leftover clothes :)  Stay tuned.
At the end of the day, at 5:29, I FINALLY let A go "shopping."  He had asked all day about getting to look for things he could have.  It was very cute :) Even given free reign, he didn't go too crazy, just got some things he wanted and a few things for B (since she was with Grandpa).  The kids had been sooooooo awesome that we went to give them dinner and ice cream treats :) Brian took them all to our house to watch a movie while Mary and I went back to load up her van with as many leftovers as possible for her to use at her fundraiser garage sale.  I figure that people donated the items to help with adoption of an orphan so what better way to use them!  Since we have homestudy appointments near her twice this week, we can haul a lot more up there, too!  We still have some cleaning and packing up to do, but it was a huge success!
Did I say huge success? I meant phenomenal, stupendous, unimaginable, mind-boggling!!!!  God provided in such an amazing way!  Including profits from our Tshirt sales, we made almost $2000 yesterday towards V*ktor's adoption!  Then, today, we were invited to the Ukrainian church to tell them about our adoption.  At the end of the service, we went up to tell them about New Horizons and Viktor (who a lot of them met).  The church gave us $1500!!!  I did the math, and, including the adoption assistance we will get from Brian's work, we are over halfway to having all that we need to bring Viktor home :)

HALFWAY THERE! 

Today is September 9th - just a little over a month since we started the adoption process.  WOW!