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
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