iGAP in Dublin: Day 3+4 : Garage Sale (Useless Junk Sale)

Unless you have some good friends to keep you company for a while (thanks Jake, Hannah, and Lauren!), a garage sale can be an extremely long and boring event.

Yesterday was a bit of a slow day, but my older brother Jake helped me set up in the morning, and then sat with me all day in the garage from 9am-3:30pm. Then he helped me take everything back in when we closed it up. He even goofed around and played frisbee with me while we waited for more "customers" to show up. Now, you have to understand something...Jake and I haven't gotten along for as long as I can remember. We're about 2 years apart and we have completely opposite personalities. I can't remember the last time we spent that many consecutive hours together. It really meant a lot to me that he put so much time into this garage sale when he could have been doing other things. Thanks so much, Jake! My good friend Hannah stopped by sometime in the morning to hang out with me for a while. She brought me a drink from Starbucks, which was really thoughtful of her. Her mom ended up coming shortly after to buy a couple of things, and she let me keep the change as a donation to my GAP Year. :) Thanks Hannah and Mrs. Gill!

Today was a bit of a different story. I had much more customers than I did yesterday! There was a steady flow of people from 9am to about 1pm. :) And some people that didn't want to buy anything made donations to my trip to Ireland! I think it helped that I had signs up that said, "SEND RACHEL ON A MISSION TRIP TO IRELAND" and "Even if you don't buy anything...consider donating to my mission trip". One lady came up, bought a book, and then told me, "Your sign is what stopped me. Good for you! I hope you have an excellent time in Ireland." And she donated a couple of extra dollars. :) Another lady was jogging by the house and stopped to browse around for a bit. She glanced at the sign and said, "So you're going to Ireland? What will you do there?" I got to share with her about the work I'd be doing in Ireland, and she seemed genuinely interested. We finished our conversation and she jogged off. She said she'd come back if she saw something she liked. She came back about 20 minutes later and handed me a $20 bill. She said, "I don't want to buy anything, but here's a donation to your trip. Have a good time!" I couldn't believe it. That was the most generous anyone had been! God bless her heart. I had several conversations with different people about why I wanted to go to Ireland for a year and what kinds of things I'd be doing there. I never thought about being able to share like that at a garage sale, but God is so great and He gave me plenty of opportunities to talk to people! :) My good friend Lauren came to the garage sale at about 11:00 this morning and stayed with me until about 2:00. It was really nice to have company. We even got to play cards when it slowed down a bit in the afternoon. :) Thanks Lauren!

Here are some pictures to document my first fundraising event. Enjoy!