Wow. I am truly blown away by the generosity from my family, friends, and from people who I don't even know. 

I always thought it was hard to raise $2,000 for a weeklong mission trip, but now, this amount I have to raise is significantly more than that was. I have to raise $15,800. Now that is a bit of a difference!

In mid-July my family and I decided that we would join in on the neighborhood garage sale. My parents decided that everything we sold would be direct donations to my trip! I thought that was very generous of them, and I was very grateful that they would do that for me. A couple weeks later we decided to make a post about it, to see if anyone around us would be willing to donate items they no longer used to my garage sale.

I was expecting, I don’t know, maybe 20 items donated. No. I was wrong. SO MANY people decided to donate items, we were running around our town like crazy picking it all up. 80% of our garage sale were items that people donated to us. This garage sale went from a tiny one to a MASSIVE one over the course of a week. We ran out of room to store things! It was crazy! 

In the time leading up to the garage sale my family and I were praying to raise $1,000 for my trip. $1,000 is a pretty high number, especially for a garage sale. At the end of the day, we were counting the money and it was way over $1,000. We raised a total of $4,188.61! Once again, my hopes and expectations were totally blown out of the water. 

God has been teaching me that I cannot put my human expectations, my human limits on his plans. The Lord has exceedingly abundant more planned than we could ever fathom. This whole fundraiser proved that to me throughout the whole process- from picking up so many items we ran out of room in our garage, to quadrupling the amount I was praying for. God walks alongside the faithful, he walks alongside those who are obedient, and provides more than they could ever imagine.

I am now over halfway funded for my trip, and I couldn’t be more grateful. I have truly learned that God did not intend for us to walk alone in this life, but he intended us to walk with community. There is no way that I would be able to go on this trip if it wasn’t for the community I have surrounding me. I am so grateful for all the people who support me. I cannot say thank you enough. I am so excited to have you all on this journey with me.