My Name is Enrique, I am a Petty Officer in the Navy and currently deployed in Iraq; I cannot begin to express my gratitude and the gratitude of my team members, your gift was as wonderfully unexpected as needed, as we begin to withdraw from the country our services are slowly decreasing, needless to say all essential items are become increasingly scarce, the items sent by you gave us a small relief as well as a reminder of home,  Thank You for your support you may hear this often but it does not make you justice and our gratitude to you  cannot be explained with words.

  Our unit is composed of around 50 men and women that proudly serve  our country, our projected return date changes on a daily basis but our postal services will stop operating somewhere in the next 6 weeks, the box arrived in good condition and it suited our needs perfectly.

 Excellent work in lifting our spirits Thank You and God Bless You.

very respectfully

AME2(AW)  Enrique

USN

PS.  Those cards are a wonderful addition and are now a decoration in our walls that remind us of our own children and families. 

And sometimes the pictures they send just make us smile!

Good day!  I received one of your care packages today in perfect condition.  The contents were amazing; thank you!!  And how could you possibly know I like Monster Ballads?!  :-)

My name is SGT Dylan, serving at Camp Eggers Afghanistan.  I run the mail room here (not all Soldiers are in combat - some have to serve them! :-)). I've been serving for 19 years and will qualify for retirement over here during the deployment.  I have two children, 6 and 3 back home and miss them very much.  My daughter is in 1st grade and I'm looking forward to the point she can write me a letter!!  I'm very proud of my service and truly believe in what we're doing here - which is to teach the Afghans to help themselves.   Behind the scenes, we're building infrastructure, training Soldiers and even drawing awareness to women's rights.

Since arriving here, I've been absolutely humbled and surprised at the outpouring of support of the good citizens back home.  Working in the mail room, I see the kind and giving demeanor of United States citizens daily.  You should all be so proud and know that the Soldiers, Airmen, Marines and Seamen are very thankful, even if they don't get the opportunity to express themselves.  I get to see firsthand the looks on some of their faces when they get a box / letter they didn't expect.  I also know for a fact that the Chaplain's here have a program where they receive boxes of goods from citizens, then distribute it to poor Afghan people.  Actions like that will hopefully lay down a foundation of hope and trust for future generations.

Again, thank you so very much for taking any amount of time to send me anything. Words can't express how appreciative I am.  The only feedback I'd like to give is please give me the opportunity to write a person back who sends me a letter!  I got a letter from a 4th grader, Erik and don't know how to respond to his questions.  Having children myself, I can TOTALLY understand the need for privacy, but perhaps a "neutral" address could be established for the people who'd like to write back, to do so.

Again, thank you for the package, God bless all of you and God bless our wonderful nation which I love so much.

v/r,

SGT Dylan