Our Gift from God

Hello! My name is Allison Vanderberg from Lansing, MI and I want to share with everyone a very awesome story. Be prepared to change the way you think about garage sales!

- 1 community
- 5 generous families
- 7 days
- 53 “Pray for Lindsay” bracelets
- 20 homemade hair scrunchies
- 230 cookies
- 58 bags of chips
- 68 cans of pop
- Hundreds of miscellaneous garage sale items
_________________________________

$1,122

Blessing one very deserving family, and adding Baby Lindsay to so many more people’s prayers…………
PRICELESS

It all started with an episode from John & Kate Plus Eight. In the episode I saw, the family put on a garage sale and donated all the proceeds to a cancer charity. I thought what they did was great and was instantly inspired. I remembered some very good friends of mine saying they were planning on having a garage sale in the near future, I decided right then I would join their garage sale and sell my items and donate them all to the Lindsay Dean Heart Fund. My first thought was that I would never be able to do something big and successful like John & Kate Plus 8 (after all I am just ONE person, and don’t have a TV show on TLC) but I thought I could raise a $100 or so for the family….. BOY WAS I WRONG! I may be only ONE person, but I have a BIG God! God took what I had to sell and multiplied it, people donated items and handmade crafts for me too sell too. We also sold cookies and drinks and took donations at the sale. I was blown away by the generosity from so many people who have never met the Dean family and never will. I was touched by each and every person who came to the sale and donated. People constantly told me there were going to put Lindsay on their prayer lists at church, one woman gave half her garage sale money, a woman who works at a hair salon put up a donation jar and sold bracelets, and so much more.


To all of you who came and donated THANK YOU. To all of you who are now praying for Baby Lindsay THANK YOU. To all of you who are now following her story THANK YOU. To all of you who helped me make this happen THANK YOU. I pray that God will bless each one of you, as you have truly blessed one very deserving family.


Luke 6:38
If you give, you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full measure, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, and running over. Whatever measure you use in giving — large or small — it will be used to measure what is given back to you."
NLT


When I was asked at the garage sale why I was doing this, I had a simple answer; I wanted to bless a very deserving family. But when I say that everything we did was to bless one very deserving family, deserving is an understatement. It is hard for me to put into words why I wanted to bless the Dean family. I wanted to bless them for their strength during the most challenging time in their lives, I wanted to bless them for their love for their daughter Lindsay, I wanted to bless them for their faith in God during a time when it has been challenged the most, I wanted to bless them for their courage to press forward, I wanted to bless them for their commitment to their other two children, and I wanted to bless them for their choice. The Dean’s chose life for their daughter Lindsay. They knew before Lindsay was born what laid ahead of them. They knew of the heart surgeries, possible transplant, countless days in the hospital, the financial burden and the difficulty that possibly lied ahead for them, and they chose life for her. This family is going through the most difficult time in their lives, something that most of us could never imagine and THEY FEEL BLESSED. Suzie and Jr do not question why God gave them a baby with a special heart, they say they are BLESSED that God chose them to be the parents of this wonderful baby girl. That alone makes them the strongest and most deserving people I know. Suzie and Jr I commend you for the amazing parents you are to Lindsay, God couldn’t have given her a better family.



And as a final note…. I encourage everyone to never again say “but, I am just one.” God can take a tiny seed and multiply it further than you can even imagine. Be faithful and God can do BIG things!