Garage Sale Helps Provide Holiday Food Basket

OKLAHOMA CITY – For the past decade, Christmas and Thanksgiving have been times when the Oklahoma City Southern Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church meets the needs of our community through food basket distribution.  

In the early years of this ministry, we looked for members within our church to help with food. But soon the leaders saw this was not the best approach. Rita Shaw contacted the local public schools and explained our ministry to them and invited the schools to give us names of families in need. This allowed us to serve both our members and the community surrounding us. 

Unfortunately, in August our community fund had less than $400 in it for making holiday baskets. It takes around $1,000 to make up 20 baskets each holiday. We didn’t know how God would provide the additional funds. 

Around this time there were four women in the church who were downsizing their households. They donated items for a garage sale. Members got busy sorting through the items and held a garage sale in late September.

We were praying and asking God to help us earn at least $1,000 from the donations. On Thursday, Friday and Sunday we made a little more than $800. As we were counting the money and checks, we noticed that we had counted a check for $20 that was actually for $200! We had met our goal.

Matthew Vixie, pastor of  Southern Hills church, announced the success of the sale and said that since we had so many items left to sell, we were going to have the garage sale again the following weekend. After the two weekends of sales, we ended up with over $1,900! With these funds, we were able to package 70 baskets of food for local families for the holidays. We learned that when we partner with God in our ministry, He has a thousand ways of which we know not to help us reach people in need. Let’s remember in our outreach we have a master witness in Jesus, the Son of God.