It often starts with one person — one Presbyterian who thinks, “There must be something I can do.”
At McDowell Church in McDowell, Va., a tiny congregation of about 50 members, that someone was retired artist and photographer Diane Stein. She wanted to find a way to support the men and women serving with the American military in Iraq.
For Stein, the war has definitely hit home: earlier, her granddaughter lost her fiancé in the conflict. Two hours before he was killed, the fiancé emailed to say, “‘Don’t worry about me, baby, I’ll be home.’ … But he never came home,” Stein said. “These are our family members, our people.”
So Stein started looking on the Internet for ways she could help support the troops, and came across the Web site www.anysoldier.com , which lists contact information for troops serving in the war and supplies they need.
Using her own money, Stein collected toiletries and treats and shipped them across the ocean. When that got to be too expensive, she put out a box in her church, decorated in red, white and blue, and asked for help.
Before long, people started buying toothpaste or beef jerky and dumping it in the box. Some wrote checks to help cover mailing costs. Stein shipped it all off, and now she regularly gets letters and emails of thanks from troops — young men and women from around the country, people she otherwise would never have met but who seem so grateful.
While the United States remains viscerally split about the morality and wisdom of the war in Iraq, many people — whether they support American involvement there or condemn it — do want to support those serving in the military and their families.
“The thing I’m very proud of for our church and our nation so far is we seem to have cleanly differentiated between national policy” — the differing views on the war in Iraq — and “care for the troops,” said Edward T. Brogan, director of the Presbyterian Council for Chaplains and Military Personnel. “We’re a very split nation on what we think on the war and the tactics” used in Iraq. “But we’re a very unified nation on what we think about the troops and their families. That’s wonderful.”
So some Presbyterians are finding ways to reach out to those serving in Iraq, organizing prayer chains, shipping supplies, keeping in touch by email, and assisting families from nearby bases with everything from groceries to child care.
Camp Pendleton, for example, is a huge Marine base near San Diego. For years, San Diego presbytery ran an outreach program for military families, a ministry that now has been split into two independent programs run by nonprofit agencies — one for the northern part of the county and one in the south.
Military Outreach Ministry in Solana Beach, Calif., operates a warehouse where military families new to the area can pick up furniture, kitchen starter kits, sheets and towels. The ministry distributes food and bread to the families of enlisted soldiers, provides baby supplies such as cribs and diapers to new parents, and runs a spirituallybased club — including free child care — for women whose husbands are deployed.
Chuck Herpick, a former Navy helicopter pilot, is involved with an outreach program at San Clemente (Calif.) Church.
For several years now, Herpick, 71, has helped organize support for a Marine engineering battalion of about 800 based at Camp Pendleton. At Christmas, the church gives the families trees and bags of gifts for the children.
Some of the Marines are young bachelors. When they come back to the base, between deployments, the San Clemente Church gives them a “welcome home” bag stuffed with shaving cream and toothpaste, gift certificates to restaurants, playing cards, fluffy towels and more.
Also included is a “welcome home” letter from the pastor at San Clemente Church and handmade cards from fifth and sixthgraders. The Marines are told that if they need a ride to church, someone will come for them.
There are also seasonal efforts. On the Fourth of July, members of the battalion and their families are invited for a barbeque. At Thanksgiving, church members head in a caravan to the base, hauling turkeys and desserts. They also take holiday dinners to the troops conducting maneuvers out in the field at the base.
Twice a year, the church holds baby showers for expectant mothers from the battalion.
Church members donate furniture and household supplies to fill apartments. If a Marine’s family needs car repairs, a mechanic will look the vehicle over — giving a discount for services or arranging financing. One military wife was given an estimate of $2,000 for car repairs, Herpick said. A mechanic from the church offered to charge $364. When the mother of four couldn’t pay that, a church Bible study covered the cost.
“They really have a heart for the Marines,” Herpick said of his church. “It’s a congregation of love.”
And the Marines “are willing to humble themselves and say, ‘Yes, we need your help.'”
Brogan has also helped organize support for Presbyterian chaplains serving in Iraq — who, he says, face the same concerns about family separation and being in a dangerous zone as others serving in the military. Some chaplains have been deployed two or three times; for those who are pastors serving a congregation, “that’s very disruptive to a pastoral relationship,” Brogan said. “Some have resigned their pulpits, saying ‘It’s not fair to the congregation to keep doing this.'”
And “chaplains are the ones who are the caregivers,” he said. They need support too, “to make sure the chaplain doesn’t just burn out. It would be an easy thing to do,” serving in conditions of stress, standing with those who’ve been wounded or killed, notifying families and attending funerals.
One chaplain said he’d gone to more than 200 funerals, along with his commanding officer, Brogan said.
And “the hospital services are tough,” with both Americans and Iraqis being brought for treatment. When the chaplains ask wounded Iraqis if they want prayer, “the answer has always been yes,” Brogan said. “Even though they’re typically Muslim, they’re glad for the intercession.”
In many congregations, that’s exactly what people are doing in response to the war in Iraq: praying for peace, for healing, for an end to suffering.
Some Presbyterians also are trying to organize other forms of support, although they’re not always sure what to do. But when they do make an effort, many are struck by how willing people are to help, and how grateful the troops in Iraq seem to be. One chaplain’s Web site, for example, has a “wall of blessings” listing contributions from a Cub Scout pack and a 4H club, from grade school classes, from individuals and families, and from Presbyterian churches in at least four states.
At Second Church in Indianapolis, the invitation to the annual congregational meeting in January said people would be asked to help with “shoebox ministries” for the troops. Normally, about 150 people come to such a meeting; this year, more than 575 showed up.
“People love hands-on mission — they love to touch it, they love to feel it,” said Joan Malick, executive pastor at Second Church.
And “we took no position on the war — not for or against. There were no politics in it.”
Instead, Presbyterians at the meeting were invited to fill shoeboxes with supplies, based on lists of what was needed that Malick found through communications with military chaplains. The plan was to fill shoeboxes (using supplies purchased through the congregation’s mission budget), send them to the chaplains, and the chaplains would distribute them in the field, often at military hospitals in Iraq, as needed.
After learning that many soldiers taken to the hospital have their clothes cut off before treatment, parishioners stuffed the shoeboxes with underwear, socks, sweatshirts, toothpaste, toothbrushes, puzzle books, sunglasses and sunscreen, soap, and candy. Chocolate tends to melt, but Twizzlers are popular.
The chaplains also asked for what Malick called “homesick food,” such as individual packages of cereal, gelatin, or fruit in single servings, tuna fish in pouches, protein bars.
Each person who packed a box wrote a personal note to the recipient. And, at the chaplains’ request, they prepared boxes for Iraqi children too, filled with children’s clothing, sneakers, socks, jump ropes, coloring books, crayons and balls.
And Second Church also sent packages to the chaplains themselves.
“We heard back from all of them that they were astonished,” Malick said.
Judy Ichord, of Vienna Church in northern Virginia, got involved in the past few months, one of a small group at her church who wanted to do something to help the troops. “One had a friend of the family who was over there, one was the wife of an Air Force guy, the other had several high school buddies who were going over,” she said.
Ichord’s daughter, Heather, is a second lieutenant in the Marines who went to Iraq in February. “For me it wasn’t personal,” she said, “until my daughter got deployed.”
So far, Ichord and her group organized people from Vienna Church to make Valentines — involving the youth groups, Sunday school classes, preschoolers, and grownups during the coffee hour.
They sent boxes of Valentines to people in the military with whom they had connections — an Army chaplain named Kevin Wainwright, a friend of a church member’s daughter who serves in a motor pool, a SEAL unit. Some went to Walter Reed hospital in the United States.
Next, these Presbyterians started collecting toiletries and DVDs. Two Girl Scout troops offered to send cookies and toys.
And they began to hear back from the troops — who responded with letters, photographs, and emails of thanks.
“Because we’re in D.C., we do have different opinions of whether we should be there” in Iraq, Ichord said. “We didn’t want that to be the issue. Our guys and gals are over there, and they’re part of our family, and God’s family. And we need to support them. … It just takes one or two of us to step up.”
