Any Lily’s Purple
Plastic Purse fans out there? (a book we’ve read and enjoyed – it’s got fun vocabulary words and
pretty good moral – but we do have to change some of the phrases. I’m pretty picky about some things). A couple of times in the book, in reaction to
whatever is going on, different characters say
“Wow.” About all she could say was “Wow!”
That’s how we feel about last Friday nights’
fundraiser. "Wow." About all we can say is “Wow!” We had such a wonderful evening…full of
laughter & sharing & kind words & incredible generosity.
To give the background – and to fully explain the faithfulness
of God in and through this event – we need to go back to January. As you probably know, in January, we went to Texas to “check out”
Mercy Ships. We spent 5 days in “Foundations
of Mercy Ships.” The entire time we were
asking God “is this what you want us to do?” (phrased in dozens of different
ways). As we left there we still weren’t
certain…but were certainly feeling like it was probably going to happen…and
on the way home, through conversations (10 hours of kid-less conversation. Beautiful.), one of the main concerns that surfaced was the raising of support (that's never the most exciting thing to think about!).
Fast forward a few hours to Sunday morning at church. In passing, Joy Crumpton asked how our adoption was going
– innocent question, right? Well…."let me
tell you what all is going on Joy….not sure about what the adoption process is going
to end up looking like…we’re thinking we may be called to go join Mercy Ships…" fill
in a little more information. And then
Joy says “if you do end up going to Mercy Ships, I’d love to help you with your
fundraising.”
What?!! God sends
someone to say “I’d like to help you with the very thing you’re most concerned
about.”
That’s just like our God.
So fast forward a little more…We’re definitely going to
Mercy Ships. No doubt. Lee McBride and Nick are having a
conversation about something unrelated to us and Mercy Ships…the conversation
moves to that…Lee says “I’d like to do a Clergy Collar Comedy Tour” fundraiser
for you.
What?! A free
fundraiser?!
That’s just like our God.
So we have someone who is willing to help in support
raising and we have a fundraiser. We ask
Joy if she’d be willing to help organize the event (knowing that she is the QUEEN
of organized…the QUEEN of doing what she says she’s going to do..the QUEEN of putting
on a fantastic event.)(but also knowing that her offer to help with fundraising may not necessarily mean she's willing to completely orchestrate an event!). She says “yes.” Amazing. That's just like our God to put all the puzzle pieces together.
So Joy does all the work (though she says she didn’t do
much. she says that Nick did a lot…Nick
says he didn’t do much…) and we show up to Christ Community last Friday night, April 27…
The event comes. People
show up! (for some silly reason I had this
idea that no one would come…)
At the end of the night, Joy gave Lee a piece of paper and
Lee shares that over $8,000 was given to go towards our Mercy Ships cost.
$8000?!?!
AMAZING.
My hope was something
like $3,000 or $4,000 – so more than double what I had hoped for came in.
But THEN, maybe 10 minutes later, Joy came up and said “we
have a new total…” Apparently there were some other gifts that were not
included in the original total...some gifts were given directly to Joy, some were in the "collection bucket" at the booth we set up…so there was a
new total...over $17,000!!!!!
$17,000?! “Wow.” About all she
could say was “Wow!”
Through the thoughtfulness & generosity of Lee McBride,
the generosity & amazing organizational skills of Joy Crumpton, the willingness
of dozens of people to serve and the HUGE generosity of our God through
hundreds of individuals more than $17,000 was given. Our God keeps going above and beyond – but what
I’m realizing is that He’s not going above and beyond – He’s just being God.
Amazed. Grateful. Awed.
Surely there will be more to come.
