Youths say care packages give troops a little bit of home

Published: 2007-03-07

WINFIELD TOWNSHIP, Ind. (CNS) -- Sgt. 1st Class Gary Kinney called it "efficiency in action" -- an assembly line of junior high youths from Holy Spirit Parish preparing care packages for military personnel serving in Iraq. For the third consecutive year the junior high youth group prepared packages containing food, reading materials and toiletries for military personnel. Kinney, a member of the National Guard who served one year in Iraq with the 113th Engineering Battalion, addressed the parish youths before they prepared more than 50 packages for mailing. "I know what it's like to be overseas," said Kinney, noting that those packages from home "definitely meant a lot to us." Some of the three dozen parish youths who gathered March 3 at the church in Winfield Township filled out mailing forms; others wrote letters that went inside the packages; and the largest group filled packages with magazines, canned goods, tissues and wipes, socks, beef jerky, hard candy, gum, fruit snacks and powdered drink mixes.

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