October 22-23, 2005 from our Columbia, Missouri Facility: 740 Care Packages completed

The first 542 were finished and picked up by the post office at 4:00 on Saurday. The remainder were packed and ready for the post office to pick up at 2:00 on Sunday. We had 18 volunteers on Saturday from Columbia, Moberly, St. Louis and Kingston Missouri including a 3/24 Marine and his wife, plus the MarineParents.com founder's son, Cpl Derrick Jensen, a 3/4 Marine veteran of OIF I, II, and III. On Sunday we had 2 volunteers from Moberly, and 10 volunteers from Columbia, MO, 6 of whom are students from the University of Missouri as well as Cpl Jensen and his wife and daughter.

Each month we rotate names in and out of the database. In the previous two months, we had added over 400 new names of Marines that had recently arrived in Iraq or Afghanistan. With the cooler weather, we sent hot drink mixes in addition to the cold drink mixes, hand warmers, and as always, batteries, t-shirts, socks, Hormel meals in a tray, ravioli and shavemate razors! We also sent ShaveMan battery powered razors as well as items donated by Rotary Clubs of Texas, the City of Roseville, CA, an elementary school in Anaheim, CA, the people from the city of Waterville, WA, the Aurora Skate Center in Illinois, and dozens of other contributions from around the United States.