A few months ago, I mentioned at church that I thought it would be nice if we sent some boxes of gifts for our soldiers serving in Iraq.  I was amazed at how excited and supportive everyone was.  I put a box for donations in the church, and it was filled the next week.  I packed up the first shipment by myself - 7 boxes!  However, it took me a long time to get all the donations organized on my dining room table.  I told RT that I was going to enlist some help the next time.

So in September we made our second shipment.  I announced in church that we’d meet in the fellowship hall one evening that week and that anyone who wanted to help was welcome to be there.  We had a good crowd and had the boxes packed, the packing slips and customs forms completed in about an hour.  That time there were 15 boxes full of stuff to ship.  We only had two names/addresses of soldiers, but both of those soldiers had agreed to distribute the boxes to individual soldiers in their units.

Last night was our third time to meet.  The response has been overwhelming.  We go to an extremely small Methodist church, but we had fifteen people meet to put the packages together.  Several parents brought their young children.  I was thrilled at how excited the children were to help pack boxes for our soldiers.  Even little 2-year old Meredith drew a picture to include in one of the boxes.  Eight-year old Leland wrote a note on a Christmas card that I wish I had copied.  It brought tears to my eyes to read the sentiments of a young child expressing love and appreciation for our soldiers.

We had pizza to eat as we worked, and we ended up with twenty-eight boxes to ship to Iraq today. 

Let me relate a conversation I had on my way to the church last night.  I stopped at Walgreen’s to pick up some Ziplock bags for the smaller items in the boxes.  I saw that they had some hand and feet warmers on sale - so I bought a lot of those, too.  I wanted to make sure we could put a handwarmer in each box.  The cashier looked at my purchases and said, “You must be going camping . . . right?”

“No,” I replied, “Our church is putting together boxes of gifts to send to our soldiers in Iraq tonight.  These are for them.”

Another customer who was in line behind me, asked, “Do you have someone over there?”

I answered, “My nephew is in Baghdad, but we got an email this morning that today is his last day.  He leaves for Germany tonight.”

“That’s wonderful.  My son-in-law is over there.  This is his fourth tour.  I keep telling him to quit, but he won’t do it.”

Another customer walked past us, then turned and, with tears in her eyes,  said, “God bless them both.”

Amen.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 7:26 am and is filed under Headlines/Current Events, Holidays, Inspirational, Our Military, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.