trust

trust is being able to say, "God, even though i have no idea what you have in store, i am going to say yes to what you have asked me to do."

Sometimes trust results in something happening that i didn't expect or even thought i wanted, sometimes the results of trust are hard. Though i know He knows all things and He has what is best in His eyes in store... it is still hard in my weak selfish and prideful heart to be grateful for the outcome.

And then sometimes trust results in something way more amazing than i could imagine, like it did over a week ago in our lives.

God has been convicting me over my materialism and emphasis on things that will fade away for a while now. At the beginning of the year we felt like we were to sell a lot of our stuff that will fade away and start living more simply. We also felt like God was leading us to sell enough stuff to by a clean water well for a village in desperate need for someone to show them God's love in this way. Did you know 2.2 billion children under 5 die every year because of sickness and diseases related to lack of clean water. It takes about $2,500 to build a water well in India through GPPD.

Anyway, so we started the process selling stuff on Amazon, Ebay, and Craigslist... it began to take a lot of time and since spending too much time on stuff is one of the things that i have been convicted about we decided we needed to make a different plan.

So we planned to have a sale where we could sale our things and other people could donate things as well and specify one of 5 causes for the monies to go to. We made plans to collect the items on Monday through Wednesday and sell them on Thursday through Saturday, June 20th—25th. We called the event PROCEEDS FOR POVERTY. If you go to www.gpartners.org you can read more about the event.

Neither one of us knew what to expect we would have just been glad to get rid of our things. On that Monday we were overwhelmed when we saw the generosity of so many people from our community and our church, the whole Student center was full and we had 2 more days to receive things.

We had passed out over thousands of flyers that were generously donated to us and had signs all over Roanoke but we knew that we need more promotions to sale all of this stuff. God provided again… on Wednesday Channel 10 and 7, our local news, showed up to interview us and kept showing blurbs throughout the weekend every day.

On Thursday, the first day of the sale, to our surprise, there was a line of people waiting. Hundreds of people rushed through the doors in the first 2 hours making us over $4,400. We were overwhelmed by God!

God loves people so much He will rescue the poor and those in need. That is HIS promise and we were witnessing it in action.

From this 3 day event we raise over $16,000!! 100% of the money will go towards building a home for orphaned and abandoned children, helping to finish a school in the slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti (which will effect around 300 children), and building 4 clean water wells in 4 villages which will effect around 20,000 people who do not have access to clean water. We also have enough to feed 30 children for one month and provide 5 families the tools and training needed to start a sewing businesses and provide for their family for a life.

To see the tangible results go to www.gpartners.org in the upcoming months as we go and record the people and effects of Roanoke’s generosity, our churches passion, and what God is doing!

We had no idea.... we just said yes Lord, we will obey. And to be real with you there is a lot more we could live without in this house. I know the refining is still in progress and i am excited about walking down His path and just being to see things through His eyes.