The weekend started with a fairly busy Friday. I finished up all my stuff for Sunday, spent an hour on my bike trainer, did my 3rd core workout for the week, ran a few errands for the coat giveaway and the toy sale, and then drove a bus to the Crawford County basketball game. I got home sooner than I thought from the game, around 10 p.m., so I was happy about that.
I got up early on Saturday, read some, and then took off for my weekly long run with friends in Bedford. I wanted 12 miles, and I knew that most were running either 5 or 10. I got there early enough to get a couple of miles in before the 8 a.m. start. A rather large group gathered to do 5 together, then a smaller group, including me, continued on to do another 5. The weather was perfect and the pace was comfortable. I ended up with 35 miles for the week - just what I wanted.
After the run I went straight to the coat giveaway and toy sale at church. Wow! I got there right after both had started, and it was crazy! Crazy in the good sort of way - lots of people everywhere. People were getting coats, and people were buying toys. We had tons of people helping with both projects. It was so encouraging, on so many levels, to see.
We ended up giving away more than 300 coats, and a few of those will be delivered this week. We ran out of a few sizes, so we will buy the coats and take them to the people who need them. About midday I left to go home to change clothes. As I was leaving I saw a family of 5-6 walking up the street, coming to get coats. None of them had coats on. It made me feel really good about what we were doing.
The toy sale was amazing also. When we tallied up the money on Saturday evening, we had right around $3500! Keep in mind that most things were sold for less than $5, many things a lot less than that. The amount of toys we had was simply amazing, almost overwhelming. These all were donated over the course of the year. Around 1.30 we still had so many that we decided that we would allow people to fill up a garbage bag full of whatever they wanted and we would charge them $5. This really helped us, because a lot things got taken away, which lessened our clean-up task.
The toy sale benefits in at least two way. First, it allows people to buy toys for very low prices. We had people of all kinds shopping, but we had a lot of poor people. This made me feel good, because it means that they will be able to provide some Christmas presents that otherwise they might not have been able to afford. Second, the revenue we receive will be used to help people in need in various ways. Everybody wins!
Here we start another week! Only God knows what will happen this week as the days unfold. Right now it looks to be a fairly uneventful week, which is bit of a change. Of course that could change rather quickly. This is my second week of my 26.2 plan. It's going great! No slip-ups and no problems so far.
I may post some more later...
2 comments:
Hey Allen, Can you give me some information on your toy giveaway. We have a monthly clothing giveaway and a winter coat giveaway in October and I think that a toy giveaway here would be wonderful.
Thanks for any info you can give me.
Jill
Hey Cuzzie,
Glad you are feeling better!
The toy thing was actually a sale, and it from a thrift store that some other guys and myself started 5 years ago. We essentially moved the store to our gym for the day and sold toys that had been donated since last Christmas.
I think giving away toys would work though. You could start with your church in January. Collect and store the toys until the first part of December. I would do it in the context of a coat or clothing give away, I think. I would also consider limiting the amount of toys any one family could take.
Hope that helps!
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