Our Smoked Chicken Dinner and Yard Sale event followed the weekend after MayFest and the Mother Daughter Banquet.  I think it took our family the entire week to recover from all the energy we had put into the MayFest!  This event's funds were split between our adoption fund and the mission's team that is going to Stormer Lake in Canada this summer.

I was a little nervous about this event at first.  Not really sure of what to expect after the previous weekend's events.  I helped get things set up for the yard sale Friday evening.  Russ was up to the church at 4:30 a.m. with the men to learn how to prepare the smoked chicken.  The kids and I were up to the church by 5:30 a.m. to start setting up all the yard sale stuff along with members of the mission team.  We also set up our craft table to sell items that were left over from the MayFest.

The event was long and our family was exhausted, but it was all worth it.  With our craft table and the split of the monies brought in from the chicken dinner and the yard sale, the adoption fund brought in a little over $800!!  Praise the Lord.  We owe so much thanks to so many people!!!  Thanks for all the hard work from everyone to make it a HUGE success!

I guess I was feeling a little uncertainity from the previous week, but was reminded quickly in my heart by God that He had told us not to worry.  That He would provide the funding needed for this adoption.    I just needed to continue to walk out in faith and trust in my Lord.  I was reminded of a prayer that Paul said for the Colossians:

"...[S]ince the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.  And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.  For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins," (Colossians 1:9-14).

Such powerful words!  How can I not be encouraged!  Through the fundraisers that are successful and through those that are not, we are still bearing fruit in every good work!  God's light must shine through me as we go through this process.  Every event is a success in some way.  Our family has been growing in the knowledge of God and being strengthened by that each day!  Through this process we are gaining endurance to push through and make it to the finish line!  We are learning  so much about patience and waiting patiently upon our Lord and His timing!  And through it all we are learning with each day to be joyful and to give Him the praise!  I know that there are some of you who are reading this that are in the adoption process and wondering how in the world you could ever pull together the funding.  I also know that there are some of you out there that have just been waiting on the Lord to make something extraordinary happen in your life. 

Let me encourage you as Paul encouraged the Corinthians, "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?  Run in such a way as to get the prize.  Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training.  They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.  Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air.  No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize," (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).

Keep striving forward.  Keep looking ahead and up towards your eternal reward!  God calls each of us differently, but it is all for the same goal!  We can easily be taken astray and look away from the goal that God has laid out before us.  So I encourage you to hold on to your "courage and the hope of which we boast,' (Hebrews 3: 6).  It is hard to walk in faith when we can't see the end result.  Find strength in God's word!  Continue to look heavenward.  Continue to put your trust in Him!