Dave, Nora, Connor and Ziggy,

Thank you so much for your generous Christmas Box. We received it today (23 Dec) just in time for Christmas, following a tough week out at our location. The items provided have definitely “given us a boost” in a major way and has already provided some much needed comforts of home and Christmas spirit.

A little about us – We are a 6 person  Ground Surgical Team.   We provide far forward/austere damage control trauma surgery to the folks doing the operations.   “Dirt Medicine.”   In a nut shell, we bring life saving care as close as possible to those fighting on the front lines.   We are currently out “somewhere” in Southwest Asia that is pretty remote.   There is nothing around our outpost for tens of miles, not even a tree.   Our outpost is so small we don’t even have a store to buy personal effects or goodies from so we rely on packages from amazing people like you.   We are just recovering from an event that left our small team caring for an injured soldier for several days, 24 hours a day- admittedly we were pretty drained from the all nighters and little sleep; the Christmas spirit was low.   Finding the wrapped package among all those snowman peeps really put our team back into the holiday spirit.    We have hung Connor’s snowman drawing on the wall of our med facility so those we treat can also see his message of gratitude. 4 of our team have small children at home and they really appreciated it.

It is people like you that keep us going and remind us why we are fighting and for what we are fighting for. From the bottom of our hearts, Thank You.    I hope every one of your family and friends has a wonderful holiday season, as you have certainly made ours.   – Devin

P.S:  pictures are frowned upon so I couldn’t take one of the whole team, but I wanted to send something back to show we got it.    I’ve already broke open the Toblerone and chocolate pretzel’s!

I am wanting to let you know how much you, your care package goodies, and your note are appreciated.   You obviously have a well organized drive!     I really appreciated the coconut water!

For the past month a large part of everyday for me has been given to care package receiving and dispersal.    Many boxes get handed out intact.    Even more get opened, sorted, and then dispersed from our chapel via people coming into the chapel and getting what they want, others that don’t attend chapel stop by our porch for coffee, hot chocolate and “goodies”.    Your boxes got a lot of “oohs and ahs” from those helping me when I opened it.

Most of your cards disappeared within 4 days.    There might be more, but the card area is kind of a mess at the moment, hence the hard job comment.    The stockings are received with a deep appreciation of the effort put into them.

I hope your Thanksgiving was a day of just that.    I hope you were surrounded by loved ones.    I chose to eat lunch with some Afghani vendors instead of the huge spread at the Chow hall.    I sat on the floor of the shop with them and ate from a large bowl of rice with my right hand.  I trust my Heavenly Father to take care of the germs!

I have attached a photo from today of a small group of soldiers from one of our worship services.    I am sorry there are no boxes in the photo.    I had to move three tables for the photo.    Be assured, there were care package items on two of them.   (The tables were in too much disarray for the photo op. )    But, your goods made into very appreciative hands and mouths!

Merry Christmas!   Please inform all those that contributed, “HOOAH!”  They are Great!

Bill