(I thought I took pictures, but the card was not in the camera)
God is amazing! I had very little faith and very little hope that this past weekend was going to be of any significance. On Monday we actually had very little stuff for a garage sale, and we switched the location from church to our home. But through the course of the week, our driveway was a revolving door, and our garage started to pack out. By Wednesday it was so packed that we had to put things into our living room. Then our living room was so full of boxes that we had to put stuff in the kitchen. So Thursday morning it took us almost 2 hours to put everything out on the front lawn and in the driveway.
What we didn't expect was that God was going to bless us and also a whole lot of other people as well. We priced everything to go: 50 cents here and a buck there... $10 here and $20 there. From 8:00 on Thursday morning till 6:00 on Saturday evening, there was a steady stream of people that stopped on our busy road. I saw up to 30 people at a time rummaging through the items. We estimate that probably 75% of the customers were Hispanic or African American. I think that English was spoken maybe 50% of the time... some knew only enough English to give us the money and leave. And people just kept on coming... many from the Hispanic community living in the apartments not far from our house.
On Friday, two of my Hispanic pastor friends came by and gathered some things for their families, we told them to take it for free, but they wanted to get rid of me and send me out of country to learn Spanish, so they put in some money too:-). One of them was able to invite some people to his church and he helped me by translating for a lady and we were able to help find her exactly what she was looking for. By Saturday afternoon, we had pulled in over $1000 and so at 4:00 we put up a "Free" sign on the road. One man stopped by on his motorcycle and was falling all over himself in gratitude as he took some in-line skates and other things for his children for Christmas. Another person was gathering things up in a box and said, "No one has ever given me anything for free before. This is amazing!" Another man from Mexico and his family stopped by from Milwaukee and he took two boxes of clothes which he said he was going to take to his needy family next month in Mexico. Soon everything was almost gone. So we boxed up about 12 boxes of clothes and took those off to Hope Center in Waukesha where they hand out clothes to needy people for free. The rest of the items (a few cups and knickknacks, material and odds and ends) we put in boxes on the curb and we have had a number of cars stop by and dig through it. One man's junk is another man's treasure! I heard them going through the stuff at 10:30 last night and 6:00 in the morning.
We are grateful to all of you who donated. It was a blessing to not only make enough money to pay the room and board for learning Spanish, but we also helped a number of needy people and were able to donate the left overs for those who will need those clothes come winter. Thank you, you are a blessing!
By Grace,
Jason, Kellie, Micah, Sophia, and Malachi Knapp
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