ONE DAY REMAINING UNTIL #GivingTuesday2023!!!
Tomorrow, it’s only a day away! It’s strange how time can seem to fly by so quickly at times, and other times it crawls, dragging our hearts with it. In a few short weeks we will celebrate 5 years of being on the new property. When Mercy Spring Ranch was founded thirteen years ago, we thought for sure the Lord would open the door to our permanent property within a few years. Those eight long years of waiting, running the ministry from a friend’s property, scouring properties in every direction, making offers, having offers rejected, escrows falling through, it all seemed like it would never end. Then, the clouds parted and there it was! God flung the doors open and the ranch had a home!
Of course, nothing on this journey has come tied neatly with a bow. The massive hurdles we would have to clear, and the mountains we would need to climb were completely impossible apart from miraculous intervention. We had the land. We had ideas and plans, but we had no way of bringing those plans to fruition apart from the Lord leading the way, and moving the hearts of others to give.
In past #givingtuesday campaigns we’ve shared some of the big stories, like the three gold coins that paid for the arena, the VBS kids who raised the money for our entrance sign, the irrigation company that donated our whole system, and many other big mountains that were brought low. Those stories are so fun to share, but it’s the smaller stories that have left beautiful fingerprints over every inch of this place. It’s the dozens of people that “bought a tree” to fill the fruit orchard and dot the landscape with future shade. It’s the people who turned out to help pay for one of our “angels in horsehair” who needed a costly surgery. It’s in those who gave to our “goat-fund-me” campaign to help us build a pen and purchase two of the cutest goats in the world, to keep the cutest lamb ever, company when they all came to live at the ranch.
We look back to marvel at all the Lord has done through you, our supporters. We look ahead at new mountains that lie in front of us and we wonder, how will He do it this time? What stories will we be telling on #GivingTuesday2024?! We are no more able to make things happen today than we were 5, 10, or even 13 years ago. This year the crops are finally producing, and families are sitting in the shade of those donated trees. Cars drive under that big, beautiful sign at the ranch’s entrance. Children hug the neck of that horsehair clad angel you helped save while letting their hurts and fears float away in that “three coins” arena.
As we share some photos of then and now, may we all remember, we serve a God of impossible math!
If you’d like to donate to our #GivingTuesday2023 campaign, here is the link to our PayPal and Venmo accounts, for those who would like to donate electronically. If you prefer to put a check in the mail, our mailing address is: Mercy Spring Ranch, 21819 McBride Rd. Escalon, Ca. 95320.