Central Church holds massive garage sale

College Station, Texas (KBTX) – Community members had an opportunity to go shopping at Central Church in College Station on Friday and Saturday.

It was all for the church’s first massive garage sale. Central Church’s Family Life Center was filled with everything from clothes, toys, tools, furniture, kitchen items and even bikes that were donated by local families. Not only did families get a chance to find some “budget-friendly items” and some back-to-school clothes, but the money raised goes towards funding Central Church’s missions ministry.

Part of that finding is giving scholarships to those who can’t normally go on the church’s missions, according to Shane Mikeska, Central Church mission pastor.

“We even do a local project called Jerusalem Project, been running for years,” Mikeska said. “Our youth go to our communities. Some of our youth don’t have the money and the means to do that so this gives scholarships to them.”

Katie Rother, Central Church volunteer, said when the garage sale started on Friday, there were hundreds of people lined up ready to get in.

“I have been overwhelmed by the amount of people who have come through, and the amount of people who have came through word of mouth,” Rother said. “Someone said that ‘I was at Goodwill and I heard that they are having a garage sell, so we came on down,’ so I have been overwhelmed by the amount of people who have came in to support out missions.”

Central Church even had to shut down it’s donations due to large amount they received, Mikeska said.

“I think next year we can plan and prepare,” Mikeska said. “This was Katie’s dream and so to try to bring it into our church, and so we’ve been running with it, but we were just blown away by the support one from our church just through add donations and bringing them, but we just got to many we had to shut it down, so we were just not prepared which is awesome.”

As Rother watched people come out to support the church’s garage sale, she just wanted to thank the community.

“Thank you for your generosity towards us, cause you’ve gone over, not just paid for the price, but some of you have donated further,” Rother said. “Also thank you for your graciousness towards us because as we were figuring out prices, checking out, they were incredibly gracious towards us.”

As of Saturday morning Mikeska said the church has been able to raise over $20,000.

“I moved back here, only been back a year,” Mikeska said. “My wife and I were on the mission field for 14 years living overseas. We both went to A&M 20 years ago, so we’ve come back from BCS just loving it. Just the support we’ve seen across this community has been awesome. Not just with the church, but in general seeing it come together and that we as a church can be a blessing to the community.”