Out of a very difficult time for me personally and amidst a down-turn in the economy God spoke to my heart to open the North Ave Thrift Store. I am continually amazed at how carloads of clothing and other people's household "cast-offs" provide the funding for God's Share Program to have a nice building and decent location to house not just the thrift store but the ministry of God's Share Program. God's Share Program has always belonged to God. Sure the calling was placed on my life to be the founder and yes I get the opportunity to oversee the business and missions side of the ministry but it all belongs to God. Therefore the apostrophe 's' in the name is to show possession of this Share Program as belonging to God. And yes my pet peeve is when people refer to us as The God Share Program but I digress... When praying and searching for the location I promised God I would put His name on the door. As soon as we secured the building a local sign shop was my first call to have signage put on the front door. But I had to laugh because along with our building came a huge tall sign out by the road. I guess God wanted His name up there too, for all to see. A lot of people see just the North Ave Thrift Store side of this organization. Then a host of other people only see the ministry side of the organization. The thrift store is very demanding time wise. If one ever thinks we here in American don't have enough "stuff" just spend a day at a thrift store where the carloads of donations of "unwanted" stuff arrive all day, every day. The biggest challenge is getting the most out of every item that comes through the door and only throwing away what truly is trash without cluttering up the entire building. The thrift store provides a great deal of our funding as the usable donations received are sorted into 4 categories: sold in the thrift store, sold on e-bay, used for missions projects, recycled for cash. With a small volunteer crew compared to the amount of work to be done the focus between the two aspects of the organization can get unbalanced. So I can be known to issue the reminder that our missions projects are the reason we are "here". Over the years I have had people question the aspect of our ministry in one area or another. Why don't we help children here in the U.S? We do. Why don't we provide school supplies in our local community. We have. Why don't we do humanitarian work. Umm, we do that too. Why don't we have teams carry in all of our supplies to avoid shipping costs. Yeah - not feasible for a myriad of reasons. Dealing with all these judgmental attitudes can be difficult. God is so much bigger and so all-knowing. So, I am glad it is His name on our front door, His name on our ministry, His name on my heart. Those that work and volunteer here are working for God. (Yes and those who steal from our store, steal from God....) It's great to know I am here for just a time as this, doing all that He has enabled me to do. Everything else that is beyond my control I give over to God. It's His Share Program, His North Ave Thrift Store, His building. Thanks to many generous supporters of this ministry who donated the funds for the down payment, we will sign the papers and close on our current property changing from leasing the property to purchasing it. So now God's name will be on the Deed as well, now that is truly awesome, indeed!
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