This week I finally got to take the donations to Columbia. On Friday I picked up the donations at Shelter Insurance in Kahoka. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of donations at this location! I put them in a pile so that Ashley, the newspaper writer, could take a picture of me with the donations. She asked me a few more questions so that she could put a thank you note in the paper. Saturday I left my house at 8 and made it to Columbia around 10:30. My Mom, Grandma, and Aunt went with me as we had a bridal shower to stop by on the way home in Macon. When I arrived, two nice workers helped me unload the donations onto a cart and take them inside. I then filled out a card stating my contact information so that they could send me a thank you. They were amazed at my over 320 items! They said that the house had been very full lately will all 18 rooms occupied currently and that these donations will be very helpful. I felt so good to finally have all the donations dropped off and I am so happy that I was able to collect so much and help so many people in need. I had originally wanted to take a few pictures of the house but my schedule was tight in order to be back for the bridal shower so I did not have time. They were also very busy with it being fully booked and I would have felt intruding to bother all of these families. When I went the first time in 2016 and toured it was a better time because many families were out at appointments or at the hospital and the staff wasn't quite as busy. In future trips I would like to go on a weekday and maybe take some of my friends with me. When I went to church on Sunday I was surprised that there were more donations sitting in the corner where my box had been. I also had someone at church give me money as a donation. My Mom had posted on Facebook and another person had mentioned that she had a donation but she did not get it to me. My Mom replied but she never answered. Luckily I have an awesome Mom who is going to Macon for her job and said she would run down and take the new donation by. I am so appreciative of this because I would have felt badly if I could not have gotten the new donation to the house. I don't know if I didn't make myself clear about the cutoff date or what but next time I will try to do a better job of this. I did not anticipate having this problem but none the less the project was a great success. I am now working on sending out thank you notes personally to most of the contributors. Unfortunately, I do not know all of the people who donated but hopefully I can come up with addresses for many of them. Once again thank you all for reading and for those that were able to donate. I hope this inspires others to help people, even in small ways. One act of kindness can go a long way!