Cattle Collateral

The money! The money! Now might be a good time to report that I had been putting $125 of each paycheck (bi-monthly) directly into the savings account each month. Not sure how long I had been doing that. We also received several extremely generous gifts from family members over the coming months, each a few hundred dollars.

So even though I was getting pumped up to do fundraisers, I knew we had to be able to come up with the large payments when the agency required them. So my dad and I headed to the bank. My dad co-signed for us, and yep, you guessed it, his cows were our collateral. How hysterical is that? We were able to get a balloon note that we could withdraw money from in increments. We did not have to pay monthly payments on it in the beginning. After one year, we paid off the interest (with our tax refund) and were able to renew it for one more year. At the end of the second year we were once again able to pay off the interest with our tax refund, and then we set it up on payments. Like a car payment. Yes, this is our reality.

The first fundraiser we did was "Pennies and Prayers." We took clear jars, attached a scrap of baby fabric (bought in the discount bin), and handed them out to our families and friends. We asked for their pennies from their pocket change, but mostly for their prayers. Holy moly was this ever successful! I am still so humbled not only by how many people contributed (all pocket change, not just pennies), but by how excited and involved everyone got. I think they got excited about it because it gave them an active role in our amazing journey. You know the African proverb that says, "It takes a village to raise a child;" well, for us it also took a village to bring our child home. And I wouldn't have had it any other way.

One unexpected side benefit of these change jars was a much needed distraction for me: ROLLING COINS! I am not kidding, not even a little bit, when I tell you how much I loved rolling those coins. And no, it wasn't because I had become obsessed with money. It gave me something real and active to do. I rolled coins and rolled coins and rolled coins; I think it might have actually saved me from a complete breakdown! HA. Occasionally some innocent bystander would suggest that I take the loose change to the bank to roll. Poor fool.

The next fundraiser was a lot more work, but returned a larger profit faster. I kept reading about doing yard sales for fundraisers. And I kept scoffing to myself that a small yard sale wouldn't be very profitable. And then one day it hit me. I had the answer! A yard sale on steroids. See, not long before that, my dad and his youngest brother had inherited my great-grandmother's apartment house (side note: Doug and I lived there from Jan 2001 - March 2002). And my dear Nana, she was a HOARDER. Not that I blame her having lived through the Depression as a single mother. So anyway, there was tons of crap being stored in her old beauty shop in the apartment house. And my family was very much dreading dealing with all that stuff. So I proposed to invest sweat equity to organize it into a yard sale in exchange for the profits. I just wish we had taken a before picture. The piles were 5 feet tall in the entire space except for a narrow and treacherous path. On top of all that stuff, we started taking donations for the yard sale. My mother was not so enthusiastic about the donations as we already had so much crap to deal with. But I was so excited and so thankful! I couldn't say no once the momentum got going. We had FIVE yard sales (I think), and we lost track of how much we made. The bad news? We still have crap left.

So now we had a loan, the blessings from our family and friends were rolling in, and I was rolling coins to keep my sanity. Go do some stretches and get ready to jump through some hoops!