AUGUST CHALLENGE! (Corrected Email Address!)

[Note: For emailing messages for the holiday shipment to our troops, both e-mail addresses that have been posted here will now work ( letters-to-send AT mindspring DOT com & letters-to-send AT earthlink DOT net)]

Well wouldn’t you know… I had just posted that last update on the Holiday Project for those 20,000 Georgia-based soldiers, when I got an email alert from Diane. Guess what?

Lip balm – DONE!!

Yep. The Holiday Project received a… well, I’ll let Diane tell you:

“WOOOOHOOOO!!!!! Oh... my... GOD!!! We have just hit the mother-load of lip balm! A VFW in Rome, GA is giving us 2 and 1/2 pallets of the stuff... which is about 500,000 tubes of Blistex!!”

Tee hee! Cool, huh?

With Diane plugging away at the donation of items, I thought that I would ask anyone who reads this blog to focus on one item, the one that I think is most important: letters.

So, the AUGUST CHALLENGE from the 8th floor is for you to write up a note to be included in the holiday stocking for a Georgia soldier. Plus, get five friends or family members to do the same thing.

Do it today while you have a spare minute. Then go pester your family and friends!

You can either send your letters/cards to the address for the Armory:

Det-1 HHC 1-108th,

ATTN: SOLDIERS' ANGELS,

6784 W. Church Street, Douglasville, GA 30134

or email the letters to the following address:

letters-to-send AT mindspring DOT com

(note: when you actually use the email address above, get rid of the spaces and replace the “AT” with “@” and the “DOT” with a “.” …so it looks like in a normal email address)

I’ll format and print out the emails and send them to Diane in September.

The emailing of messages worked well for the holiday care package shipment that Angel Michelle and I did last year for a Navy ship. Many included a digital photo that I printed out along with their notes to make a photo card. The picture at the top of this post shows some of the picture cards based on emails, plus a bunch of cards made by my mom's 5th graders in Texas and some high school students in Georgia. :-)

I know the holidays seem a long way off, but all the letters have to be collected long before most of us will shop for our Thanksgiving turkeys, let alone Christmas gifts.

So, start writing! Don’t know what to say? Here’s one message that might give you some ideas, but also consider talking about what you’ll be doing for the holidays, family traditions or whatever.

You can do it. I know you can.