Christmas Stocking Update
Piles of stuff are coming in. My popularity with the mail handlers is quickly dropping, but its well worth it. The attached picture is only a small portion of the boxes cluttering my office- most are in a storage container outside as we’re getting organized. IF you still have shopping to do, we’re doing quite well on hard candy and gum, but are needing more stockings themselves, CDs and gift cards—many places might even be willing to donate if you ask!
Thank you SO much—Keep being a blessing!
CH Lewis
10.30.08
Christmas is Coming!
Christmas is just around the corner! Well, maybe not…UNLESS you are trying to put together Christmas Stockings for thousands of Soldiers—THEN it starts sneaking up real quick! Some of you may recall from my first deployment when I was in Afghanistan, a project I helped a little with called “Operation Christmas Spirit,” in which the sr. Chaplain in Afghanistan whom I worked with for a short time, was trying to get stockings to all the Service Members in that theater of operations. That was about 10,000 at the time. Unfortunately I left before I could see how that turned out.
But I was inspired. This time I decided I wanted to do the same for the Soldiers under my care. Not quite that many, but still a lot—our home unit is relatively small, but we would like to provide stockings for all personnel coming under our care. With those numbers and transitioning units included, we’re looking at needing about 5,000 stockings to care for our troops. While that sounds like a lot, our people have a lot of groups and churches eager to help, so it should be an exciting, yet easily manageable project.
In order to keep it manageable, we’ve checked with our Soldiers to put together a list of what they would like Santa to bring them (though we unfortunately had to edit out SOME of their requests!). PLEASE restrict your Christmas Cheer to just what is on the list so that Santa’s Elves in uniform can have a manageable job of sorting things and stuffing the stockings! For those of you or your friends who are craftily oriented, we have three projects that you could dig your fingers into: mini-prayer shawls, Ecumenical Rosaries, and ACU stockings (see attached). Unfortunately I don’t have the links or patterns for the first two projects, but I’ll keep working on that and send it soon.
Christmas away from home can be hard, and I’m hoping that this project can help bring a little of the comfort of the Christmas Spirit to our Soldiers whom I doubt will get a “White Christmas” (that song was also a Solders’ Christmas project). With your help, we can make it happen, and make it memorable. Thank you for all you do!
Keep being a blessing-
CH Lewis
Operation Christmas Spirit Stocking Stuffer Ideas:
(Please remember in ALL your items that this is a CHAPLAIN sponsored RELIGIOUS SUPPORT program. I don’t mean that we can’t have any fun with it, but be mindful of what kind of fun would be appropriate for this kind of program. Also, as these Stockings will be given to ALL Soldiers under our the care of the 371st, we need to be respectful of the “religious pluralism” that is essential to maintain in order to ensure continued Chaplain ministry. I will be putting together a carefully worded CHRISTMAS (not “holiday”) card to go with each to point to the Star of Christmas, and the real meaning of Christmas, but this must be carefully worded, so let me take care of that end.
- DVDs—preferably Christmas themed movies, cartoons
- CDs—preferably Christmas themed; the Christmas comedy types will be great, but be careful with them, as some can be inappropriate for a CHAPLAIN sponsored project
- SMALL travel/office/desk games, brain-bender puzzles
- Gift cards: books, movies, music download, etc.
- Gift cards: Restaurants Present where we are: Subway, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Green Bean Café (Other restaurant cards might be nice, but would be inaccessible until the Soldier gets home)
- SMALL bottles of flavored syrups for coffee
- Pocket packs of tissue
- Gum
- Christmas soaps
- Slim Jim
- Tooth brush holders
- Hard candy
- Baggage name tags
- Puzzle books- Suduku, word games
- White CREW length socks, no logos
- Do any of you have connections with movie stars and the like—letters from THEM would be really cool!
- Mini prayer shawls
PLEASE keep your gifts within these categories to simplify our process. For security purposes, you must send stockings UNSTUFFED, and the stuffing items in BULK, preferably in commercial packaging. Temperatures are still HOT here, and our storage facilities are not ready until October. Please don’t ship until the middle of September. Packages take about a week to get here. Please try to have items here by the end of October so we will have time to sort and stuff.
Our address here is:
Operation Christmas Spirit
c/o CH (MAJ) James Lewis
HHC, 371st SUS BDE
UNIT # 73408
APO AE 09333
Thank you SO much, and Keep being a blessing!
CH Lewis, Al Asad, Iraq
P.S.—when I asked for items “in bulk,” I merely mean to have you send items such as candy still in its commercial packaging, and not having you send stockings already “stuffed”—we need to stuff the stocking here for quality control and security purposes.
Please see, use, and share the attached as a flyer or church bulletin insert if you are helping collect items for Operation Christmas Spirit. Though we are not yet ready for delivery, please let us know if you can, how much of what you expect to be able to send, so we can get the word out about what we still need to collect. THANK YOU!
Some have been asking about the camo stocking I mentioned for the Christmas Stocking project. Click to view a photo, it is about 2/3 size.
