Letter from One Soldier

I received a handwritten letter in the mail yesterday, from a soldier in Camp Taji, Iraq.

He wanted to thank me, and to let me know the toys we've sent have been handed out to the kids of Taji, Iraq. It read, in part,

"Our mission here is to rebuild the Iraqi Air Force. Our contact with the children is limited to waving at them as we fly over in our helicopters. Today we gathered the toys and dropped them from our low flying Huey. The kids loved it! It isn't an operation we can do often, but it makes an impact. Not only did it make the kids happy, it showed the locals that their Air Force is beginning to fly once again. People are now understanding we are here to help out, not to run their country."

I was feeling pretty nice about that letter, and today tried to map back through my emails to figure out how this young man came to be on our mailing list.

It turns out that a lady from Michigan read about us from Paradise Driver, a blogger in Hawaii, and send me a name of a soldier from New Mexico, who is now working in Camp Taji, Iraq.



This just makes me smile. There is something kinda crazy-magical going on every day, isn't there?



I'll be sending out a Toys for Troops Newsletter in the next few days. We've tried to give folks a breather, after the holidays, but I've still been mailing about 500 beanies a week, and 3 large valentines care packages went out to 3 different companies. It will cost us over $20K to send the inventory in our garages right now, so it seems I'll be packing and addressing a lot of boxes, shaking a lot of hands, and relying on the good folks in this community and uh...maybe a few of those between Michigan, Hawaii, New Mexico....and others, to ship or sponsor a box.

If you want to catch that newsletter, sign up on the sidebar on the right, or email me at ljstewart@gmail.com.

I'll be in touch!