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Sunday, August 25, 2013

Fundraising Update

Our first fundraising events were scheduled for August 2nd and 3rd. I took Friday the 2nd off of work. The first event we had a shoe and handbag sale from 7-10:30 am. The weeks leading up to the event we gathered gently used shoes and purses from friends, family, and coworkers. We also went around to two neighborhoods and passed out flyers asking for shoe donations. We asked if they wanted to donate that they leave their shoes out by the front door and we returned the following day to gather donations. The support that we saw for this event was unbelievable.  I had friends that worked so hard and helped gathered items from their friends as well. We were blessed with Sydney’s grandparents letting us have the sale in one of their vacant office spaces. This made things so nice to be able to set everything up in Bentonville and we were able to have close friends and family stop by before the sale to shop. We also gathered some gift certificates from local restaurants and businesses such as: Las Fajitas, Applebee’s, Colton’s, Bonefish, Steak n Shake, Red Lobster, Massage Wellness, Vintage Glam and Junque in downtown Rogers and raffled them off. This was by far our most successful fundraiser. We gathered so many shoes and purses that we actually had to extend the sale to the following weekend and we still have so many left over that we are planning on having a yard sale the first weekend in September.Here is a picture from one of the tables inside the shoe sale. We had 4 tables set up seperated by sizes and another room full of purses. 


After the shoe sale, we quickly moved on to a bake sale outside of Sam’s Club from 3-8 pm. Sydney and her dad made an awesome poster board sign together with a picture of Uganda on it for the sale. I love to cook, but I do not bake. Jared made some cupcakes and Sydney and I made brownies. Once again with this event we saw amazing support from some our family and closest friends. We set up outside of Sam’s Club with a table, ice chest, and tons of baked goods such as; zucchini bread, no-bake cookies, pumpkin bread, apple cake, stuffed jalapeƱos, cinnamon rolls, lemon poppy seed muffins, blueberry muffins. We had so many baked goods and sold everything, except 3 things that we ended up giving away at the end of the sale. This was by far Sydney’s favorite event! She is a social butterfly and enjoyed people just stopping by and sharing their mission trip stories with us, some had even been to Uganda before! Sydney and Marlana helped a few people take their groceries to their cars and we had one man stop by with his children and said that he didn’t want to purchase anything, but gave a donation and asked if he could pray with us all. We all gathered in a circle with him and his children as he prayed over us as we go on this journey. It’s the little things like this that we will never forget!
Saturday, August 3rd we had a pancake breakfast at Beef O’Brady’s. Matt, the owner of Beef’s was gracious enough to allow us to have this event at his restaurant. We tried to pre-sell tickets and then had the breakfast from 8-9:30 am. Sydney and I waited tables and served pancakes, sausage, and coffee/orange juice. It was great to see all of our friends and family come out to eat breakfast and support us on our journey as we try to raise money for our mission trip. Among our closest friends and family I was pleased to see our friends from our fostering class who came from Fayetteville with their newborn baby they are fostering, some of my co-workers, and a friend from high school I had not in years with his mother and daughter.
In the midst of all of our fundraising efforts we got a call from DHS to care for twin 3 year old little girls temporarily. We received the girls on Thursday, August 1st, the day before the weekend of our 3 scheduled fundraising events. I didn’t know how we were going to get through that weekend, but we did. The girls left this past Friday the 23rd, but they definitely changed our lives forever. One day I was in a hurry to go to the store and hollered, “Come on girls we have to go!” They both ran into their bedroom. I followed them to see what they were doing and they were packing their suitcase!!! Last week, Sydney won a prize out of a jar in her Spanish class at school and she picked a nightlight and brought it home for the girls. They were so excited and when they said their prayers at night, they thanked God for their nightlight! We knew we were only going to have them for a short period and we tried to continue to care for them, but it just didn’t work out. As we told the girls how much we wanted them to stay, but they had to leave, one of the girls looked up at Jared and said, “You’re not my daddy anymore?”  Things like this broke our hearts every day. We got balloons one night and had the girls write their prayers on them and then we went outside, let them go and sent them up to Jesus! These girls will forever be in our hearts & prayers and hands down made our lives better in this short amount of time we were blessed to have them in our lives.
Here is a note I found in Sydney's room recently to our first foster child. Made my heart happy that I have such an amazing and thoughtful daughter.