PGR Christmas and Army Family Adoption

The Patriot Guard Riders (PGR) is having their 2nd annual Christmas party on Dec 8th in Spring Lake (close to Ft Bragg). We are adopting an Army family with 10 children with ages ranging from 1-16. We are also in hopes of having a few local wounded heroes join us for dinner.

We are extending a welcome to any Soldiers' Angel who would like to join us for some fun and helping a few heroes at the same time. If you are interested in attending or donating presents or money for our family, please email me at vactlnc@gmail.com Thanks, Susan

Help Needed for Asheville VA

The Asheville VA is honoring 150 veterans on Saturday, December 1st. They are giving each honoree a single red rose. Thanks to Kevin's hard work, our Team Leader, the cost of the roses has been taken care of. They will be providing meat, cheese and cracker trays also. If you would like to donate to help make this a great event for our veterans, please send Kevin an email at keving3858@yahoo.com asap. If your company would like to sponsor a food tray, it will be advertised during the event. Help us let the veterans know they have NOT been forgotten!

A Poem by Fonda Brewington

As angels hover above waiting for you to awake,

Watching and guiding every step you make.

Shielding you with their radiant wings never allowing anyone to take,

Surrounding you with Gods love to help you come home to all the love ones who wait.

Quilters Wanted!

We have an Angel, Rabbit, who is located in the Hope Mills area. She is currently making quilts for Walter Reed and our local heroes. She was able to get some scrap material donated and is looking for some quilting friends.

If you are a quilter or would like to learn and want to help keep our heroes warm, please send Rabbit an email at thomasrabbit5@gmail.com.

2007 Fundraising Competition

http://soldiersangels.org/index.php?page=fundraiser

Operation Christmas Tree

Operation Christmas Tree wants our troops to have a little bit of home during the holidays so they are planning to send 5,000 2 foot tall Christmas trees with lights and decorations to service members in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of a tree including lights, decorations, and shipping is $20. Please go to their website and make a donation. You can donate $20 to provide one tree or you can donate any amount that you choose. All donations, regardless of amount, are greatly appreciated. This will help make the holiday season brighter for those who are away from home serving our country.

http://www.operationchristmastree.com/

Wanted: 10,000 Cotton Panties

We're trying to raise 10,000 pair of new cotton panties for our service women. All sizes, colors, & styles, but no leopard print or thongs, please. They don't have to be from Victoria Secret's, go to Wal-Mart, K-Mart, the Dollar Stores....please help!

PLEASE, if you can help let me know. (Disneymagicmama@aol.com)

You can send them directly to:
Soldiers' Angels (Panty Drive)
914 Tourmaline Drive
Newbury Park, CA 91320.

Please EMAIL me with the number of panties you plan to send. Yes, this is an URGENT need! Come on Angels......panty alert!!

What is a Veteran?

I know Veteran's Day has passed but honoring them is a daily event. Below is an email I received that I think everyone, everywhere should read:

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye.

Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg - or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul's ally forged in the refinery of adversity.

Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem.

You can't tell a vet just by looking.

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She - or he - is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another - or didn't come back AT ALL.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other's backs.

He is the parade - riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket - palsied now and aggravating slow - who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being - a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You. That's all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.

Two little words that mean a lot, "THANK YOU".

"It is the soldier, not the reporter, Who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protestor to burn the flag."

Father Denis Edward O'Brien/USMC