THE TROOPS ARE NOT FORGOTTEN!

Towards the end of September I got an email from Latanya Henry from Tampa
Florida. She said that she had been looking for information on the Gardez
area where her husband had just found out that he would be deploying to.

I know you have heard a thousand times "It is a small world", well our world
just got a lot smaller. It turns out that Latanya's husband is a
Radiologist at MacDill AFB and would be on the team that was due to replace
our team in January 2008. Talk about coincidences.

Latanya and Linwood were experiencing the same roller coaster Carrie and I
went through. He had just been notified of a 15 month deployment and he had
to leave in 2 weeks. The roller coaster did not stop there his status
changed from day to day. So one day they go to bed thinking they only have
13 days together left and wake up and it is called off. This is not
unusual. Those who have not experienced a military deployment cannot
appreciate the mental stress that a family goes through before the Military
member ever leaves. The story ends that Linwood's initial deployment was
cancelled.

Latanya and Linwood

I asumed at that point I probably would not hear from either again. Boy was
I wrong. A few weeks ago I received another email where Latanya mentioned a
"Quilt-A-Thon" that she was a part of in Tampa Fl. This was their 3rd year
and were going to be honoring those of us here at Camp Lightning.

I was humbled that by starting this blog to keep my friends and family
informed, that it would play a part in a "Quilt-A-thon" to honor our FOB.

The pictures you see below are from this event.

I will also include a link to all the pictures below.

This is Nettie, she is 80 years old and wanted to support the Troops! Thanks Nettie!

This is Michael who braved all the girls and did his part to contribute.

This is Gregor the owner of Bernina Pfaff sewing center helping out quilting one of the quilts. Like mother Teresa said "we can't all do great things,but we can ALL do small things with great love"

I believe Krystina is in the blue and to her right is Katie and to her left is Tatiana (Latanya's daughter)...these girls gave up their Saturday to help make quilts and letters for us. I will show some of the letters on tomorrows post.