Giving the gift of gab!

As many of you know, my husband was in the Navy for 5 years.

He was stationed in San Diego and served all over the world, including the Middle East and Japan. He led groups of men in open-ocean ship boardings, mainly in international waters, to check all sorts of ships for any type of illegal materials: drugs, weapons, even human trafficking. The small group of sailors (12 men at the most, down to 6 once the war against terror began and there were many more ships to check) were often hugely outnumbered by the ship's crew, and they had to search every space on the ship, sometimes taking hours or even days. It was a dangerous job, but it also meant that he was not often able to call home.

Even though I did not meet my husband until after he had left active duty for the Air Force Reserves, I can only imagine how it would have felt to not hear from him for weeks or even months, and when I consider the fact that he may well go back overseas at some point in his military career, the lack of communication is what scares me the most. That is why I feel so strongly about this new charity I heard about, called cell phones for soldiers. www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com

Cell phones for soldiers was started by two teenagers who wanted to find a meaningful way to give back to the men & women serving in the military. This growing charity take donations of old or no-longer-working cell phone and uses them to give soldiers all around the world the opportunity to talk to their loved ones. They have already raised more than 2 million dollars worth of donations, and are hoping for another 12 million this year. Their next goal is to get video phones for soldiers, so they can send and receive videos from their families. Imagine how priceless that would be if you were away from your family for 6, or even up to 18 months at a time. To get to see your husband or wife, your children, in real live video would make that separation so much more bearable!

I found out about this company through an interview in the Family Circle Magazine (magazines are another one of the things I LOVE!), and I was so impressed with the simple yet powerful concept that I wanted to share it with you. I don't know about your family, but mine has at least 3 or 4 dead cell phones floating around, usually just taking up space in a junk drawer. Either something breaks on them, they stop working or you simply upgrade to a better phone. Now, along with cleaning up some of those junk drawers, you can put those dead phones to a really good use. I love that kind of multitasking!

There are over 40,000 registered drop sites for the phones (18 in my zip alone!), or better yet, if you log on to their website (see above) you can request a postage paid shipping label! All it takes is a few minutes to wrap it up and you are done. I truly hope that by getting the word out about this fabulous charity we can help a few more soldiers get a chance to call home this year.

Pass the word!