I'm in Awe.

Can you believe this? I certainly can't. All these bags for the children in foster care. I still haven't even officially asked for bags. This is all from my testimony and word of mouth. This isn't even all of them. I have to pick up about a dozen duffel  bags from someone! I can't get over it. Every time I'm at church, there are suitcases tucked into a corner. What looks like just one suitcase is a whole set tucked inside each other. This is beyond what I could have imagined. I really thought I'd be buying most of them from yard sales and thrift stores. Or that I'd be trying to raise money to buy them myself. I can't get over my church family and this community of amazing beautiful people who give me bags by the dozens! My friend Heather over at Room To Breathe just wrote an amazing blog about working together and how God doesn't give us a mission and then expects us to go at it alone. Read her blog, it's worded much better. But, it's true, I never expected this, and I know I'm certainly not at this alone.

I did have one story to share about this project. A group of ladies at church started me off with about a half dozen bags. They said they were inspired and wanted to help. At the end an older lady hugged me very tightly. She whispered in my ear "I was one of those kids with my belongings in trash bags." She hugged me extra tight. I can't begin to picture her life in the system some forty years ago. I know back then the system was way worse than it is now. They practiced not allowing a foster family to become attached, therefore they moved a child over and over until they were booted out at eighteen. All with their items in trash bags. I'm glad I can change that mistake, a little at a time, with the backing of amazing people!