I Almost Turned Down A Miracle Worth Thousands.

Ooooooweeeee, I've been itching to tell you this for a week. And if you are new here... Real quick... Move-In Day Mafia is my nonprofit that provides decked out dorm rooms and monthly care packages for HBCU students who have aged out of foster care, are unhoused or grapple with severe financial hardships.

Now, back to our miracle.
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Early November last year, out of the blue, I got an email from a woman named Jackie from The Container Store. She had an offer that stopped me dead in my tracks.

Wait. What??? I had to clean my glasses to make sure I was reading right. Plus, Container Store is Mafia's interior designer, Nikki Klugh's favorite store.

But get this...Follow-up emails revealed it was nearly 800 sheet sets, along with underbed storage containers and laundry bag backpacks!

The exact stuff our scholars need!

This kind of donation would take a massive load off our budget for years.

But there was one problem.

It was an answered prayer wrapped in a logistical nightmare.

🤔 Where would we store them?
🤔 How would we get them from Dallas to Atlanta?
🤔 We don’t have the budget to handle a gift this big.

I didn’t want to say no. But my non-logistical butt got nauseous just thinking about it.

Knowing there was no way we could handle this much, I resolved that I would just try to accept a few. That would be better than nothing.

Every little bit helps, right?

I reached out to a few of our Dallas volunteers and asked if they had room to store a few sets of sheets.
A few said yes.

Then. The holidays hit, and communication paused for a while.

TURNS OUT, THAT DELAY WAS DIVINE TIMING.

Fast forward to the top of this year.

I was trying to set up our Adopt A Scholar wishlists on Amazon and ran into a snag. So I called our Amazon advocate, Terreta, for help.

(Backstory: Amazon already gave us $10,000 last year, and they rolled in to help with move-in day at Clark Atlanta and Morehouse, too. Solid partners from day one.)

Terreta introduced me to her colleague Mia, who works on Amazon’s Local Good team.

I thought meeting Mia was just gonna fix my account hiccup. Mia started explaining her role, and I’ll be honest…I wasn’t tracking at first. So I asked her to break it down in real talk.

She said:
“Let’s say you’ve got a donor in another city who wants to give you something, and you need to get it to Atlanta. We can help with that.”

I stopped cold.

LaTerra, my assistant who was on the Zoom with me, saw it in my eyes the minute it registered.

I repeated it slowly to Mia, just to be sure:
“You mean... if The Container Store in Dallas wants to donate 1,000 sheet sets and supplies, y’all could transport them to Atlanta…for FREE?”

Mia, cool as ever:
“Yep.”

If you know me, then you know what happened next.

All professionalism went out the door, and I LOST IT!

I started jumping up and down cuz I knew…I knew that if this part was solved, then there was no way God was not gonna let me see the miracle all the way through.

THE HEAVY MACHINERY MELTDOWN

But it still was tricky.

The shipment wasn’t coming in boxes, it was coming on giant pallets.

Which meant we’d need:
🤔 A storage facility with a loading dock
🤔 A forklift
🤔 A pallet jack
​🤔 And a forklift driver

I didn’t have access to any of that. And I was back to wondering if this miracle was going to fall through.

While I was working on the machinery, I knew it would take People Power to get the stuff up in a storage unit...a storage unit that we didn't even have at the time. Something else I had to figure out...how much storage would actually be needed?

LawdHamMussyGeezus my brain. I decided...do the easy stuff and start working on volunteers.

So I made a call to our Atlanta Best Buy buddy who manages the Morrow, GA store.

Ed had already gone hard for us during Clark Atlanta and Morehouse’s move-in day too. So I asked if he had volunteers who could help us unload the truck if I figured out the machinery aspect.

That’s all I was asking for. Volunteers.

THREE MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR ORGS… ONE BIG YES

Ed had bigger plans. When I explained what I was working on, in his calm, steady bass-filled voice, he goes,

“Ms. TeeJ... let me work for you.”

And just like that, God flipped the whole script.

Ed took the wheel from there. No more of me worried about loading docks, forklifts, pallet jacks, and forklift drivers.

Ed took it all and coordinated directly with The Container Store and Amazon.

At one point, I was watching the email exchange in awe that not one, not two, but THREE multi-BILLION dollar orgs came together for Mafia!!!

Like what??? I didn’t even know I could pray for something like this.

The pallets were delivered to his Best Buy store in Morrow.

His team broke everything down and repackaged it.
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Then Amazon sent another truck to pick up the boxes and delivered them directly to our storage unit, unloading them too.

I was no real help to the process by then. I got to watch in awe as people did what only God could’ve orchestrated.

AND THEN… A BONUS BLESSING

And just when I thought that was the end of it?

Ed hit me with one last miracle:
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“There’s a grant connected to this,” he told me. "Move-In Day Mafia will receive a $500 donation.”

Now listen.

I don’t understand why Best Buy decided to pay us for letting them help...

I don’t have to understand why.

​I just need to be grateful. We got to accept AAAAAAAALL of Container Store's generosity with Amazon's and Best Buy's help.

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IN MY BRITNEY SPEARS VOICE...

"Oops... y’all did it again!"

Okay okay okay—I know that’s corny, and you gotta be a certain age to appreciate it, but I’m not stopping me from hollering:

Y’ALL. DID. IT. AGAIN.

For the second month in a row, every single Adopt A Scholar wishlist got bought out.

Let me say that one more time for the people scrolling fast:
📦 TWO STRAIGHT MONTHS of every scholar covered.
💳 Gift cards sent.
📬 Needs met.
🙌 Miracles made.

And this one hits extra hard because we’re in what we call Summer Survival Season—when most of our scholars are no longer on campus and many are dealing with housing instability or food insecurity. That’s why, from May through August, we switch from Amazon packages to $25 Visa gift cards so our scholars can buy what they need wherever they are.

The goal?

$200 per scholar, per month.

And thanks to y’all, our scholars aren't missing a beat.

Whether you adopted a scholar, shared the link, or just sent us good vibes, you were part of this miracle. It takes a village, but let’s be honest…

​It takes a Mafia to move this fast. And you handled it.

Yesterday, I found out that I didn't get an opportunity I really wanted for Move-In Day Mafia.

Yet! I felt bummed all of 5 minutes, and more so because that application took me daaaaaaaays.
In this season, I "win" a lot. But I'm no stranger to losing... a lot!

However, I've also lived long enough to develop the spiritual maturity to know can't nobody stop ANYTHING that God has determined is mine.

So I dust my shoulders off and keep it pushing.

But!

Get this...

I opened LinkedIn right after I saw the "losing" email.

Y’all, guess what...

I was tagged in a post informing me I had won $500 cash ‘cause my comment was one of three favorite comments from a virtual summit I listened in on.

$500 cash! For meeeeeeee... not Mafia! 😂😂😂😂

I've learned that every “no” has already been filtered through the hands of a God who loves you too much to let you settle.

So stand 10 toes down in trust. If it were truly yours, you’d have it. If not? That just means better is on the way.

That's it for this week! Don't forget to subscribe and like, comment and repost. As always, volunteer and donate at MoveInDayMafia.org. We've opened applications for 2025-2026 school year and we're gonna need your help!