A coworker of mine forwarded this on to me from her husband who is in Iraq. I feel rather passionate about orphans. This is a real heart-wrencher.

We went to an orphanage today. This was different from the last one. This one is run by Caledonian sisters and is a school for girls. I came real close to packing one six year old in a box and shipping her home. Like most women in this society, the girls were generally restrained. This one was just the opposite; she grabbed me by the hand and wanted to show me things. We found a nerf football in a box and played catch (making the nuns very nervous in the sitting room).
We laid the grab on a pallet of Snickers bars. Before we went to the orphanage, we first loaded school supplies we had left into the trucks. Then, we stuffed every remaining space with cases of Snickers. Then, we filled the smallest spaces with 24 pack boxes of Snickers. We were in the sitting room with the nuns and the girls and they were sort of fidgeting nervously. I stood up and motioned for all the girls to follow me down to the basement garage where the cars were parked. I opened to doors and started loading them up with boxes of chocolate and they were thrilled. They had a lot of fun unloading the trucks. The candy will get passed on to other orphanages.
We had a guy go with us who I met at the palace. He’s an active duty guy LTC (the Army equivalent of me) who’s a former Special Forces who now does intel. He’s big in the Knights of Columbus and has been looking for an organization to support with cash the Knights have raised back home. He also has a six year old son who is crippled with cerebral palsy. He’s a big tough looking guy. He was playing catch with the kids and me. When we got back into the car, he was crying. He said it was the first time he had played with kids in eight months. He said it was the best day he had in eight months. He had a point.
We are starting another hair brained scheme. We are going to start asking people to send us toys for the kids for Christmas. Not big things, but small stuff like beanie babies and happy meal toys. We want to round up as many as we can before Christmas. We are going to start making a list and checking it twice…..