The Church of God Pirates Out Did Themselves

I know you're saying "huh". We had a car wash today. We asked Matthew Peter to take charge of it for us and he came up with a brilliant (and I mean that seriously) idea to have a theme and have it be pirates. I know, how does pirates fit with church, God, etc. Who cares. It was fun. A couple of weeks a go several of the youth came over and we did homemade pizza for them while they made some pretty cool posters with the "pirate" theme. Then today was the day. We were all praying hard for good weather as this is our raining season and that's about all it's done for a couple of weeks. We woke up to a gray day that quickly turned into a beautiful summer day. We were going to have the car wash in the back parking lot of the building the church is in, which is the door we go in for church BUT the picket there didn't work. Brother Nowling called the maintenance man and he told us we could use any of the spigots and there was up at the front right hand side. This was perfect. We set up our hot dog stand and money booth at the front off a busy road, Northern Lights and washed cars along the side of the building. The plan was to go from 10 am to 2 pm. We were asked to dress up as pirates which all the Peters did an awesome job of (pictures to come probably on Jenna's blog and facebook). Matthew sent pirates Micah and Megan, and then our beloved Timothy Osborne (aka our marketing tool) to the streets with signs. Micah and Megan in their costumes and Tim's non-stop crazy jig (Matthew, Nathan and Jenna also took a turn; even Matt's dog Kershaw was out there with a sign; but the pros were Micah and Tim) they brought the cars in. The goal of the car wash to get our rent fund out of the hole. I didn't remember what that amount needed to be but I had a goal of a profit of a minimum of $200. PTL. 28 cars in 4 hours, hot dogs, chips and soda (one of the businesses came out and bought $20 worth of food for their employees for lunch) brought in $325. After deducting the $58 for the hot dogs, buns and chips (everything else was donated with everyone giving something) we cleared....drum roll please, $267. 21 cars from the street, 7 of our cars and food. It was pretty cool as they washed some pretty nice cars. We charged $5 for the car wash and $4 for the dog/chips/soda. Only 4 of the people actually paid $5 the rest were $7 or more. We had some give $20 and $15. It was funny as the couple with a Corvette gives only $5, but after talking to me and asking what it was going for, he gave another $5.

Without a doubt God is good. Several people told me God had to be in this because of the beautiful weather we had after several days of rain. We were able to share about TCOG quite a bit. Matthew even met TCOGOP man (may have been a minister, I can't remember) that knew him in Bethel.

We had comments about it being a great idea to have a theme, about our "marketing" people on the streets doing such a great job, about loving the hot dogs, it just went really well.

I can't thank our youth enough. We had about 75% participation in the car wash. They sacrifice so much. They donated the stuff for the car wash, their time PLUS most of them pay pledges to make the rent. God has blessed us with great youth and I KNOW God will return back to them ten fold.

Every third Saturday of the month we have a youth activity and a different youth is in charge. August Levi is stepping in for Jeremy as he'll be out of town. He said he would like us to do one more car wash before winter sets in. So Lord willing we'll try it again. What will we do different...our signs will be on cardboard and sticks (as life was tough for them to hold the flimsy poster board), we will get a longer hose and another hose with a splitter, we will bring old towels for drying (they seemed to work best) and I'm not sure what else.

Oh, oh, oh...also the lady that came out to buy for their business said we should something like this more often and I mentioned a bake sale and she LOVED that idea. The doors are opening and I thank God for it.

I need to finish getting ready for youth Bible Study tonight. Yeah, car wash and then several are helping Micah and Megan move, then youth Bible study. A very fulfilling day.

Everyone have a great day in the Lord tomorrow.