Once again, I want to thank each and every one of you who helped make the 2 Weeks for 200 project a success. I am still in awe of what we accomplished!
I kind of recapped the short version of the last 6 months in my last post. If you go back through my posts you'll see the longer version in bits and pieces. But I didn't recap the last 24 hours, because, well, it had been the last 24 minutes at that point! :D But as a little breath of fresh air from our usual advocating/heart-pouring posts, I figured I'd tell a story. One of God. Of Friends. Of prayer. Of hard work. Of Triumph.
2 Weeks for 200 had been going on for, er, two weeks. We were wrapping up, and we were still about 30 likes short. At one point on Monday I had posted a shout-out on our Facebook page, saying if we got roughly 1 like per hour, we'd make it. Some hours we got a Like. Some we got 5. Some we got 0. I had NO idea how on earth, on the LAST day of a project, with a little over 12 hours left to the day on Tuesday Morning, we'd make our 200. So in the true spirit of what I promised to do in my "Five Loaves and Two Fish" post, I turned it over to God. If it wasn't His Will, it wasn't going to happen. And on that same note, if He DID will it to happen, we'd get a miracle. Knowing God and His hand in Orphan Ministry, I was hoping and praying for a miracle. We got to about 6 p.m. EST. 6 hours left and we still needed 20 likes. I had seriously been trying to stick it out and keep my enthusiasm up the whole day. I really did. But I was on my last legs. I had NO clue how I'd make it. Posting a couple last-ditch efforts, praying super hard and celebrating every like we got with a new status, I was keeping things moving. But at the rate I was going at, there was no way on Earth I'd hit my goal. Que miracle time.
We had had a TON of friends and accomplices plugging S4TS all over FB and blogger the whole two weeks. People have been grabbing our button like nuts. And like the final battle sequence in the second Lord of the Rings movie, at the last moment, our long lost allies came in with the sun behind them to shine a light on our last stand. Our new friend Ashley Quinn, formerly of To Love the Unloved and now part of Defending the Fatherless, brought in a good 5+ more people. Ashley Gibson, Carter (formerly Antonio)'s Mom, another 5+. 10 Right there. Sammy of the 4 Girls 4 Christ came in 4 us. :D And in the final moments, Taylor of Defying Prevalent Notions came in with her Social Networking Guns a-blazing, with at least 10 more likes! And by the time the counter caught up, we hadn't just hit 200.
We hit 214.
Including myself, we're technically 215, but specificity isn't the point here; we had made it.
God really showed His hand for me that night. In the final hours, not only had we reached our goal through Friendship and Prayer, we had surpassed it. Was it NUTS trying to keep up? Absolutely. Was it Frenetic? No more than it was Phenomenal.
I honestly have no clue when or what we're gonna do next. Honestly, if I type the tag-line 2 Weeks for 200 one more time, I think I'm gonna get Carpo Tunnel. And if this has taught me anything besides to trust in God when my chips are down, it's that fundraising is a full-energy experience, emotionally and physically. I've got a TON of things to do between now and when School starts. But one thing I can say for sure is this: 2 Weeks for 200 was an awesome experience, if not a Chronicle of Craziness!
No comments:
Post a Comment