CIA Story – CHOA Family Baskets

Our small group signed up for the project, which consisted of collecting donations and creating baskets to deliver to families who have children at Children’s Healthcare who are battling cancer.

Our small group was put in charge of holding a bake sale to raise money to hopefully buy some gift cards to go in the baskets for the families. I have to admit that I had some doubt about how much money we could actually raise through a bake sale. I found myself praying while I was baking my goodies on Friday night and getting them packaged for the bake sale. I asked the Lord to just do what He does and show up for these families that we would be serving and that He would be glorified!

The Chick-fil-A on Spout Springs Road in Flowery Branch, GRACIOUSLY offered to let us hold our “bake sale” inside of their restaurant, from 9am-11am on Saturday morning. We were so encouraged after the kick-off at the FB campus and headed over to Chick-fil-A. One of our group members had come up with the idea of just giving our baked goods away for a donation of any amount, in hopes that we may be able to raise a little more money for the gift cards.

At 11am we had raised over $500 dollars and the manager at Chick-fil-A told us that we could stay an extra hour. Our group decided to take the money we raised and give back to Chick-fil-A by purchasing Chick-fil-A gift cards to go in the baskets. Chick-fil-A turned around and gave back even more to this cause, by donating a card for a free Chick-fil-A sandwich to go in with the gift cards!!!

We were so blown away by what God did with our “bake sale”!! All in all, we ended up raising over $600 and were able to get the gift cards, as well as toothbrushes and toothpaste to add to the already overflowing baskets for these precious families.

God did immeasurably more that we could have ever asked or imagined and left all of us saying, “Only God!” All it took was stepping out with a little bit of faith, and the blessings just kept multiplying. This was my first experience with CIA and I will not miss out in the years to come.