On Saturday, June 6th, we woke up and started our day at the ballpark around 7am. We returned home around 6pm exhausted, but, OVERWHELMED by the outcome of the kickball tournament! We had 10 teams enter into the tournament and a large group of volunteers help make this day a HUGE success! I want to first and foremost, thank again, ALL the people who had a hand in this event! We absolutely could not have done this without you! Those of you who helped in the planning (you know who you are), we thank The Lord for your friendships and giving hearts! We are blessed beyond measure to know each one of you! We will never be able to thank you enough so we ask the Lord to return to you the blessing you have so graciously given to us!
It has taken me several days just to process the events of the day! Before I get to the outcome raised, I want to share what I experienced and learned from this day! First, we were overjoyed with the love and support from our friends and family that showed up early to set up, who sat out in the heat all day, who worked to the point of exhaustion and even sat in the torrential downpour that occurred in the afternoon with out a single complaint or sign of bailing out- loyal rock stars!
Here are just a handful of our wonderful volunteers at the end of the day
snow cones on a hot summer afternoon
concession stand
The face painting was impressive! What talent she has!
We were so encouraged by the 10 teams who sacrificed their time to come out and support our cause! We were amazed to see so many people out on the fields duking it out for "tournament champ". People who haven't played kickball since the playground days, were out there giving it their best and the results were so fun to watch!
Planning a fundraiser is a lot like planning a wedding (for those of us who were brides); something is bound to not go as planned. I want to talk about the hiccups that we had because in those, God opened our eyes to His faithfulness and sovereignty. Everything happened that day exactly as it was supposed to. The food truck that was supposed to be out to feed everyone lunch had an unexpected family emergency and at last minute could not make it out. Here is the moment that we have a brief panic attack, but, our lovely support system jumped right on it with an on the fly plan B! We didn't have to do a thing! What a beautiful example of community! Lunch is covered, our players are able to get some food to re-energize for the remainder of the tournament...then the clouds roll in! We think, "this will just pass over"...wrong! It was a torrential down pour for about 30 minutes! The kids loved it, but for me, another panic attack! The fields are under water, everything is soaked, games over, there's no way we can still play on the fields, we won't have a winner...the discouraging thoughts kept coming as I stood by myself guarding a speaker under the pavilion... and then out of nowhere, one of the guys walks over and says..."If we don't play another game today, this tournament was a huge success" you know what, he was exactly right! Thank you Lord for sending that reminder to me! I so needed to hear that in that exact moment! It's amazing to me, how the Lord works...as I was pondering the success of the day up until this point, the sun came out, the fields drained/absorbed a good bit of the water and some of the guys grabbed rakes and started preparing the fields for play again. Due to the delay, a few teams did have to exit early but enough remained to complete the tournament and so we DID! Praise God for those little reminders that He is in control of all things and we are not no matter how much we plan for things to happen! It could not have ended any better than it did!
CONGRATULATIONS to the undefeated tournament champions
SARC ATTACK!
Oh, and you probably want to know how we did in meeting our goal of $10,000 for this fundraiser...
With teams, sponsors, concessions, silent auction, face painting and donations we raised a total of...........
$9, 610
Amazing! Unbelievable!!! We could not be more excited and thankful! We want you all to know that YOU are contributing to bringing this baby into our lives...we don't know a name or have a face yet, but we KNOW, He/She is coming...
One last acknowledgement and thank you to all of our sponsors!
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