Hi Joanne,
Thank you for the update. Is there a final count of Morning Star members who signed up for boxes beyond what was given out? Last week Janet Parshall, on her national talk show from Washington D.C., covered stories about servicemen in Irag. These stories were the positive ones that we don’t hear about from the national media. May I have permission to email Janet Parshall about Morning Star Church? The message and the story needs to get out! If there is a question about her or her program please take a look at Janet Parshall’s America on the web. If churches across America did the same thing, our service people would be buried with gifts from home and know how much we appreciate what they are doing.
Thanks,
Mike
You are truly amazing! Your kind words have touched my heart and once again have brought me to tears. I passed along all this info to Steve, and he’s so humbled and amazed, too. He sent an email to the church and I will be mailing out a card and letter tomorrow. I just can’t tell you how much this means to us and our family. Some days it feels like we’re forgotten, but you have restored our hope. I don’t know how to ever thank you. You are truly doing God’s work!Bless you!
Shannon
Dear Shannon,
I want to thank-you for your kind e-mail. I enclose below my report that I sent in to the Church that I hope will bring you some comfort. I was called today by the wife of a Vietnam Veteran. They had picked up 2 boxes yesterday and were going to the store today to shop for the soldiers. They want to make sure our Troops know they are appreciated this time-unlike when her husband served. Please let my wife Debbie or myself know if you have any needs whatsoever. My thanks are to you and your husband for your service.
Sincerely,
John
Dear Jo,
I have the pleasure of reporting to you and the Board at Morningstar Community Church a summary of events from Yesterday. I would first like to thank the leadership of the Church and especially you for allowing this project to be offered to the members. I am thankful of your involvement in the mundane day to day issues of running the Church, unfortunately, you may
not always be a witness the positive impacts for Christ that you are making in the lives of our members.
I started out with 147 boxes and had asked our community group for prayers that all would be taken. I was hoping that 50-100 would be requested. I was not prepared for what happened. After first service, the boxes lasted for about 6 minutes and the project quickly became one of taking down names and number of boxes needed. By the time second service started, I had a list of 84 boxes needed. This was repeated in the second service and the booth was swarmed again with people anxious to sign the list. I am honored to report that I have in my possession box requests totaling 246 boxes!
I would like to share some examples: One community group has requested 20 boxes to have a group packing party. I will be receiving military addresses from 3 more soldiers. I was approached by the wife of a Navy special forces soldier who had been spending $50 to send packages to her husband and was unaware of the savings on using the flat rate boxes-she wants 25. I will also call the Oregon Military Public relations officer and pass that on so spouses can afford to send more packages to their loved ones. The leftover candy from the fall funfest is now dubbed operation “Sweet Tooth” and 4 boxes are being shipped today to Lt. Col. Bill Schutz in Bagdhad for the troops to distribute to the Iraqi kids in the field. The
more positive relationships the troops are able to make, the sooner our soldiers will be home.
I wish all of the Morningstar staff would have been present to receive the heartfelt thanks that was graciously tendered upon myself by Mrs. Jan Schutz and Mrs. Shannon Smith. While their husbands are away, these heroic wives have to run the household, work etc. and are often overlooked as to their day to day needs. (The Church may want to look into this). It was everything I could do not to breakdown in public.
One teacher is taking this idea to her school.I will be ordering 500 boxes today and have already made plans to return to Morningstar on Sunday December 4. This will allow us to provide the same Salem area troops with another round of boxes that if sent in a timely manner will arrive around Christmas. I want to thank again the Board for allowing this to happen. My only wish would have been for each soldier serving away from home to have been standing behind the booth, as I was, seeing the huge crowd of their fellow Americans patiently waiting to express their love and affection through these boxes from home to them for their service on our behalf. I am and will remain your most obedient servant,
John
Hey Guys, things continue to be busy at it is getting hot. It is only in the 90′s but when you are used to the great, mild temperatures of the Pacific Northwest this stuff can be a rude awaking. I probably should feel good about this nice weather, in July and August it gets up to 125 -130 degrees. Anyway, like I said I am keeping busy. I will be taking a trip up North to look at some projects, so I am pretty excited about that. While the Green Zone is realitively safe you can go stir crazy after awhile. A great thing about the Green Zone, however, are the things to see. Like the attached pics. Hope you enjoy. I also added alittle info on them. Take care, and thanks for the prayers and also thank you all for checking in on Jan, Melissa and Cassie.
Bill
Hands of Victory: To celebrate his “victory” over Iran, Saddam decided to build a Triumphal Arch. The concept of a triumphal arch is a European import, without precedent in the Middle East since Roman times. The colossal Hands of Victory monument has dominated Baghdad’s skyline since the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Built in duplicate, it marks the entrances to a large new parade ground in central Baghdad , towering 140 feet above the highway. The triumphal arch is shaped as two pairs of crossed swords, made from the guns of dead Iraqi soldiers that were melted and recast as the 24-ton blades of the swords. Captured Iranian helmets are in a net held between the swords. And surrounding the base of the arms are another 5,000 Iranian helmets taken from the battle field. On the ground are helmets that soldiers step on, further depredating the Iranian soldiers, when entering the parade field. The fists that hold the swords aloft are replicas of Saddam Hussein’s own hands. The German company that built the monument, H+H Metalform, said it was given a photograph of Saddam’s own forearms to use as a model. When Saddam inaugurated these triumphal arches, he rode under them on a white horse — an allusion to the steed of Hussein, the Shi’ite Muslim hero martyred at nearby Kerbala. The day before the first bombing run on Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi TV showed a mass of Iraqi soldiers marching beneath the huge crossed swords of the Victory Arch, to the theme music from ‘Star Wars’. In April 1998 Iraq’s “volunteer army” paraded for six hours in Baghdad’s “Grand Festivities Square,” the large outdoor arena marked by the two sets of enormous crossed swords.
Monument of the Unknown Soldier: The Monument to the Unknown Soldier is said to be inspired by the glorification of a martyr from the Iran-Iraq war. What looks like to many as a flying saucer frozen in midflight, represents a traditional shield (dira¹a ) dropping from the dying grasp of an Iraqi warrior. The monument also houses an underground museum. The artificial hill is shaped like a low, truncated cone of 250 m diameter. It is surrounded by slanting girders of triangular section that are covered with marble. Red granite, stepped platforms of elliptical form lead to the dome and cubic sculpture. The steel flagpole is entirely covered with Murano glass panels fixed on stainless steel arms and displaying the national flag colours. The cantilevered dome is 42m in diameter and follows an inclination of 12 degrees. It’s external surface is cladded with copper, while its inner surface features a soffit finished with pyramidal modules alternating steel and copper. The promenade is covered by a semi-circular, flat roof supported on a triangular steel bracing. The roof is covered with a copper sheet and the soffit displays V-shapped panels of stainless steel and Murano glass.
The transportation here is far from routine, security reasons of course. Not a lot of excitement since Operation Lighting has been going on in Baghdad. We have only had a couple threats and only one day where we had three shells hit in the International Zone. No one hurt. I was able to take a tour of the International Zone with some fellow Oregonians; Bill Williamson from Hermistion, a retire state police officer and Rick Lewis, Chief of Police in Silverton (?). Both are here teaching the Iraqi police force. The pics I attached are of Uday’s Palace that we did some good damage to and the Republican Guard Headquarters. Both are used by our forces, at least th e areas that are safe. I have been to many of the Palaces of Saddam and his family. They are beautiful but it pains me to see the life style he lived while his people suffer with no food, electricity 10 hours a day, repression…Anyway, his trial is coming up. Well, take care. More to come
Bill
Hi Guys, how are things? Sorry for the lull in e-mailing, Whew!! Am I glad one whole year is complete. Things are going well. Activity was nice and slow for June and July but is increasing as the Iraqi’s get closer to the deadline for writing their constitution. But, all in all, its not bad in the IZ. The insurgants indirect fire is still not that accurate. Their vehicle born IEDs, however, are impressive and very dangerous. I haven’t been doing much traveling; once in awhile I will go to Taji (about 30 North of Baghdad) but that’s it. Of course, Jan would prefer I stayed in the IZ my whole tour. A couple of days ago we had a heavy sandstorm, which was an experience. As far as contracting is concerned, spending a great deal of money and having the experience of a life time. Projects take forever to get completed. Costs are high because of, well, you can probably guess. We had two projects that we had to close down because a few of the Iraqi workers were killed or threatened. I think I had mentioned that before, but it still continues today. American and British contractors are making money!!! And, we have had a cooling trend with temps only at an average 115 degrees. I think that about covers it. Next e-mail I’ll provide something thought provoking like “what will the impact be to world order if the U.S. disengages to early?”
Take care, and God Bless
Bill
Many thanks for the support to our troops. This is the link to the website with the mailing addresses for our deployed soldiers: http://www.oregon.gov/OMD/DeployedUnits.shtml
God bless,
Capt Braibish
MICHAEL S. BRAIBISH, Capt, ORANG
PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER
JOINT FORCE HEADQUARTERS, OREGON NATIONAL GUARD
Phone: 503.584.3886
Cell: 503.932.5805
Fax: 503.584.3912
Email: michael.s.braibish@mil.state.or.us
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Edmund Burke
Dear Jo, This link shows the various Oregon units in Iraq and Afghanistan. All we have to do is fill the boxes and send them to the names listed and they will be distributed to the soldiers. This will be easy! The items most requested:
For the kids that they interact with:
*Hard candy (NO CHOCOLATE-it melts)
*any school supplies
*pencils
*notebooks For our wonderful troops:
*Jerky
*Music
*Movies
*CD’s
*games
*local news
*magazines
*cookies
*pepperoni sticks
*skittles, protein bars
*and how about a note expressing God’s love and our thanks? The boxes that I have are flat rate boxes that cost just $8.10 to mail. It takes 7-10 days to arrive so items need to be sealed/wrapped accordingly. This would be great to do this. Let me know what you think.
John
Hi guys, How are things? Please forgive me for not writing, I have been extremely busy because I lost my second in command, he rotated out. His replacement is due in anytime so I should be able to pass some things off to him and be able to take some down time. Anyway, let’s see, what’s new? My office moved about a mile from our old office in the Palace. The building we are in, it is my understanding, was an art gallary. I haven’t seen any of the art, but the building is not bad. It is very crowded with all the different commands but it is functional. I moved to a different billeting area which is next to the Combat Support Hospital (CSH – pronounced cash). As you can imagine it gets noisy because of the medivacs coming in. I will say, however, that I have been extremely proud of the quality of people in the command because I haven’t heard one complaint of lost sleep or the helicopter noise coming into the CSH that on some nights seem endless.
These next few days leading up to the referendum will be an interesting part of Iraqi history. From my vantage point, this country has a long way to go. We shouldn’t expect to see a great deal of change overnight, but we should expect to see the Iraqi’s take control of their own destiny. As you are no doubt hearing in the news, that really isn’t happening fast enough. In the area of rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure that has been an expensive effort, both in money and lives ( mainly Iraqi). We have had to stop, cancel, and reprogram projects because of the insurgancy attacks, sabatage, kidnappings, etc… Progress is slow.
Some parts of the country are better off. I have mentioned, I think, the Northern part of Iraq known as the Iraqi Kurdistan where progress is well ahead of any other part of Iraq. I took a trip up their a few weeks ago and was excited at the progress and the culture. It was sure refreshing to be around people who seemed to appreciate you. We visited the citadel and we interacted with some of the people still living in the citidel and around it (don’t judge the progress by the pics of the Citadel). The Erbil Citadel settled more than 8,000 years ago and is one of the longest continuously inhabited sites in the world.
I hope all is well. I am starting to really think about home but I am trying to curtail that because time really does feel like it is flying. You guys take care and keep us in your prayers.
Bill