All Aboard the Cra Cra Train

It's days like today when I think what we are doing is nuts. If we were on a train, I'd be the conductor of crazy or the co-conductor. Is that a role? Shuffling our sons to school, making lunches, testing our ability to be Betty Crockeresque (making tiny cupcakes for our event this weekend), being a full time Mom, making dinner, being a full time wife and as I'm in the midst of 'life' I stop and think, "crap. We need 100,000 dollars." It brings everything back into perspective. First off, who in the right mind decides to make their life more hectic and crazy? Me. That's who. I can't be content with my awesome family, my great house, my 'it's a wonderful life' because there is an entire generation of people dying from hunger and being sold into slavery, and having to decide which child they will sell in order to feed the rest. Not saying being content with your life is a bad thing but for some reason I want something more. I want to make a difference.

A normal person would just try and assimilate into life. Not me. Apparently I like a challenge because this will be the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life. Pushing out a baby when my epidural wore out? Minute compared to the task of raising 100,000 and having thousands of lives waiting in the balance for you to produce the money they need to take care of their families. And it's not just raising the money... that's hard enough, it's raising the money with a deadline. June 1st. That's it.  Put up or shut up.  Show me the money or go home. Out like a fat kid playing dodge ball... you get the idea. And I almost think it would be just like God to wait until May 31st for the money to come in. But He must know that this is so stressful, that tossing and turning at night and worrying about the money isn't healthy but there's a part of me that thinks we HAVE to be doing something more. I need more hours in the day. If I could just get in front of so and so surely they would want to be a passenger on this train! I'm telling you one thing - when we go to do this again in whatever continent we are on, no more hard deadlines. We'll raise the money and then give it out. This is way too much for two stay at home wives and mothers to do by themselves. I know God is with us. I know He will fight for us but we still have to do our part. And I feel like there's something more we could be doing but I don't know what. Neither of us wants to neglect our family for the sake of the call. Not.gonna.happen. I've got nothing more to say today except ALL ABOARD THE CRAZY TRAIN DESTINATION AWESOMENESS.

I will leave you with one final picture. Note: We are the frog.

Just when I get a little low

a few good pieces of news come along to cheer me up and since this blog is also a helpful reminder to us as to what all we have gone through in this crazy journey called 'non profit' I am going to document it. We have a deadline on raising the money we need for the micro loans. The marketplace will open, and our 300 people will need their money at least a month beforehand in order to gather their inventory etc...  and we have to come up with how we are going to get the money in the door. When you think that 1,500 initial lives will be impacted in this first round of loans it's pretty overwhelming for two stay at home Moms trying to juggle saving the world and being wives and mothers.

Remember this post awhile back? http://ohfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-heart-of-generous.html

Well I get a call at the beginning of this week out of the blue from Amanda and she says, "Remember those rack cards you gave me about Open Hand?" (side note: every order she's been putting our rack card in it to tell people a little about us since she's donating money to our cause)  I said, "Yeahhhhh" and she says, "Well I need like 500 to 1,000 more."  To make a long conversation short for some crazy reason a really popular social website of some sort had a blogger who posted the most 'famous' picture of Amanda's cabbage patch kid hat and basically claimed she made it and she had people coming out of the woodwork wanting her to make them a hat. It was as if nobody had seen all the publicity that Amanda had gotten until one poster called out the blogger for 'stealing' the picture of Amanda's wig and claiming it to be hers and the poster linked to Amanda's etsy site, which just in case you or someone you know would LOVE a hat - here it is - http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheLilliePad?ref=shopsection_shophome_leftnav  and Amanda tells me in this conversation that her etsy site has 'blown up' five times more than when her wigs went viral back in the summer. By this time I'm stunned into silence and also silently crying. It was a great sign that we are doing is still important and to not give up.

Then another fun thing - we are doing a ladies conference at the end of October and we are going to do goodie bags for the ladies and one of the things we'd like to give them is colorful scarves. A lady who used to be a buyer for a department store decided she was going to call them and see if they'd be willing to donate some. The manager says, "how many do you need." She says, "well we need a lot." and he says, "Will 600 do?" And proceeds to tell her to come in and pick out whatever patterns she'd like. (OMG) And then I have no idea how this went but someone contacted Alisha because her grandmother had died and she had 100 scarves she wanted to give us. What the heck!? So awesome.

So these are some things I want to remember when the going gets tough because it is always hard to get people to give money even though it is such a worthy cause.

We are getting into the final few weeks before the training begins for our 300 loan recipients so it's crunch time.

I'll leave you and myself with one final thing...

when you think about quitting
think about why you started in the first place