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"Where other forces, for good or ill, will wait for precise orders and plans to respond to an attack or any other 'incident', the American force will simply go, counting on firepower and SOP to carry the day."
A French Infantryman's View of American Soldiers
Spring has sprung, the clocks are moved forward, and we are thanking ye olde Irish for a season of friends, fellowship, and (hopefully) pots 'o gold on the other side of the rainbow. A few updates for your reading pleasure:
We had a great turnout from Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd's third box collection/packing event. The group, lead by Heather Faircloth, collected cold medicines and snack foods to fill 66 boxes in February.
Lakewood United Methodist Church's box packing was lead by Amber Mahoney and Bill Keller, US Navy Capt (ret), and was supported by volunteers from local Target stores. We sent 49 packages filled with items contributed by Target employees. Take a look at this month's Frontline Feedback from CPT Redding in response to some of those packages. That brings February's shipping to 115 packages!
We helped Eagle Scout candidate Barron Davis ship packages to a unit in Afghanistan, and Barron is receiving thank you notes already! We are thrilled that Barron is getting responses so quickly. He's our third Eagle Scout candidate to work on his project through Cypress Cares and we've already got a fourth candidate, Daniel Cassanova, in the works as well.
Raquel had a great time surprising the elementary level winners of our essay contest last month. Neither student knew they had won until the announcement was made. Raquel went to Fiest Elementary School to present second place to Miss Abby Heath, whose father is an Army Veteran, then on to Black Elementary to surprise Nicholas Izaguirre with his award. Nicholas' father is a Marine Corps veteran. In both cases, the presentation was made in front of the students entire grade level of peers! Raquel will be presenting the senior high students with their awards in May at their school's spring awards program. Nicholas' essay is our editorial note at the end of the newsletter.
Everyone's favorite time of Spring has come: Girl Scout cookies are here! Thank you to the following for their contribution for our packages: Miss Logan Powell, GS Troop 13514, GS Troop 14315, and Brownie Troop 17681. Also contributing items to packages in the past month was Cypress Lakes Roots & Shoots Club. There is an amazing young girl in the San Antonio area that has been sending cookies to troops for the past few years. This year she collected 2,000 boxes for our service members, and gave 1,000 of them to Cypress Cares. A big thank you to SueZahn Lucas for driving out to San Antonio to pick those boxes up from Madison Albrecht. What an amazing young girl. Check out her website for more information on her effort.
http://girlscoutcookiesforsoldiers.vpweb.com/default.html.
Please remember, we are in need of sponsors and players in our golf tournament and ask that you encourage golfing friends to get signed up to play. Our golf tournament is going to be fantastic, and we look forward to your participation and support!
Due to the preparations for the golf event, and in order to spend time with family, etc., we will take a brief hiatus from hosting events in August or September. But one thing to keep on the radar is our October Treats for Troops! We're looking for a place to host this event. We'd like a new, fresh location so if your church or subdivision would like to host our group, please let us know.
We're looking forward to a great Spring here at Cypress Cares! Thank you for your amazing support.
Raquel
and the rest of,
The Cypress Cares Team
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Golfers and Sponsors
Needed | |
3RD ANNUAL CYPRESS CARES GOLF TOURNAMENT!!
This is our primary fund raising event of the year, and we count on its success to get us through an entire 12 months of shipping expenses. We need the support of everyone involved in this organization to make the event a success and help us meet our goals.
The tournament will be held of Friday, April 27 at Gleannloch Pines Golf Club in Spring, Texas. Cost to play is $150/person, $600/team. Sponsorships range from $200 hole/tee sponsors, up to $10,000 Red, White and Blue Tournament sponsors, and everything in between.
We already have a full slate of veteran-filled teams ready to join our Cypress Cares supporters for a great day on the links.
Contact Raquel if you are interested in playing or contact Bill Keller if you would like to become a sponsor. |
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Other ways to support Cypress Cares! | |
There are a few ways that you can help out our effort without much effort on your part.
Click here to get a list of things you can do...and forward the information on to your family and friends too! Every little bit helps. |
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Volunteer Corner | |
We'd like to shine a little spotlight on another volunteer here at Cypress Cares.
For the next couple of months, we are going to introduce you to our new Student Representative Team. These junior and senior high students will be serving as liaisons between Cypress Cares and their respective schools, working to encourage student participation, faculty and staff support, and making sure that everyone knows about what all we are doing to support our troops.
For March, we are spotlighting Miss Maria Sopher of Langham Creek High School. Maria is a sophomore at Langham Creek High School. She is on the girls varsity soccer team and involved in FCA, YoungLife, and the TOMS club. Outside of school, she plays club soccer for Texas United and participate in Lifeteen at her church. After graduation, she hopes to attend Texas A&M to study animal science in hopes of being a large animal vet one day. Maria enjoys hunting with her father, reading, and hanging out with friends and family.
Maria chose to be active in the Cypress-Cares because she thought it would be a great opportunity to gain leadership skills, while helping out the troops. She hopes to help raise awareness for those men and women giving their lives to keep our country safe and free. She stated "I think they deserve our support and I am honored to be able to help!"
Thank you Maria for joining our team! |
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Troop Spotlight | |
WE NEED A FEW NEW SUBMISSIONS FOR OUR SPOTLIGHT! | |
As you know, we like to keep a service member in on our homepage's Troop Spotlight. We still have Michael Barham there, and are very happy to announce that HE IS HOME from Afghanistan. We are hoping to have other members to feature in the near future but need YOUR help to do so.
Consider submitting a service member whom you know for this feature. We continue to try and feature someone new each month, as long as submissions are sent in. Absolutely any service member may be featured here, deployed or not!
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Save the date: Upcoming events | |
MARK YOUR CALENDAR!
March 18, 1:30pm
Box Packing
CrossBridge Church
20555 FM 2920
Hockley, TX
Join us in our final shipping event of March as we try to ship out another 100 boxes of goodies for our troops. We will need everyone to bring something, preferrably protein filled snack foods (nuts, jerky, beef sticks, tuna pouches) but also baby wipes, dried fruits, canned fruit, etc.
April 27, 2012, 2:00pm
3rd Annual Cypress Cares Golf Tournament
Gleannloch Pines Golf Club
Spring, TX
This event is held to raise the funds that we need to ship our care packages. Nearly a full year's worth shipping expenses are raised in this one event. We will have several teams of Active Duty, Reserves and Veteran troops golfing in this year's event, and dinner will include a great presentation by a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel, Sean Siebert. We hope that you will consider supporting this event by playing, sponsoring or volunteering.
For more events, visit our Upcoming Events page on the web! |
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Frontline Feedback | |
Ma'am, I would like to thank you for your care packages. LTC Bottiglieri is our DCO and you sent him many packages which he shared with all of the soldiers.
Your support is much appreciated, and reminds us how much we love our country, and serving in the US Army. People like (Cypress Cares) make more of a difference than you will ever know...Thank you again for your service.
CPT K. Redding.
US Army
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Yesterday, the crew of our Army MEDEVAC unit received the best care packages ever. The dedication of your folks to assemble over 120 parcels for our unit was nothing short of amazing. These are the best presents we have gotten while deployed to Afghanistan. I am touched by the great detail, variety and thoughtfulness in each one. Your volunteers clearly put a lot of pride and effort into every box. The handwritten notes were very well regarded and meant a lot to us. Many of them are now posted around our compound to remind us of the support America has for its military. The other items have made life a great deal easier out here too!
Thank you so much for doing this for us. I hope that our sincere gratitude and appreciation is known by this simple message. I'm just one of the average-GIs in the unit, so it was very special to get such an astounding present from complete strangers. Please know that we will keep doing our best to serve the fellow Soldiers, Sailors and Marines in Afghanistan and that your efforts help keep our morale high and our pride in America strong.
SGT B. B.
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Warrior Dash is Coming |
There are a few of us running Warrior Dash in just about a week! On Saturday, March 17, Raquel, Dona Worth, Toby Anderson, Kim Sweet and Brandy Klafka will be running with members and supporters from Team Red White & Blue Texas.
If you are interested in sponsoring Raquel, Toby, Brandy, Dona and Kim in this run, click here. Our goal is to raise $2,000 through our run.
You are welcome to come out and support our run. We will be in the 10:00 heat and look forward to seeing some of you cheering for us.
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What Freedom Means to Me
by Nicholas Izaguirre,
5th grade, Black Elementary School
Freedom, a powerful word to many people, but to me it means something special, something amazing, and something spectacular. When you live in America, it means you can talk about whatever you want and not be ruled by an emperor or king. It means you can pick any religion you want. Freedom means that your parents can pick any name for you. It also means you can wear any kind of clothes you want. For many people, the Declaration of Independence created all the basic freedoms in America. A famous line in it says, "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."
To a kid, this means a lot. Life means that we are free to live and stay in America. Liberty means we can be free from any other country. The pursuit of happiness means a lot, for example, if a boy goes up to a girl and he insults her, then the girl will feel bad. That is not the pursuit of happiness. Pursuit of happiness is when a boy goes up to a girl and says a compliment and the boy and girl walk away happy; that is the pursuit of happiness for the boy and girl. I think the pursuit of happiness has a lot do with a kid's life. If you think about it, without those men that signed the Declaration of Independence, we would not have this great and free nation to pursue our happiness. |
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