Operation Christmas "Presence"

An outreach to provide a Christmas "presence" to our deployed soldiers during the holiday season.

Hello, my name is Tina Rice, a Bradley County resident and proud mom of a US Army soldier.  I set out on a mission Christmas 2006 to provide care packages to our deployed soldiers for the holiday season.  When my son, PFC Timothy Keegan Rogers who was deployed in Iraq asked that rather than send a care package to him that I send it to his friend who had not gotten any mail, it broke my heart to imagine this young man repeadly going to mail call with the others and never receiving anything. 

With the holidays fast approaching I began to put together a plan.  My objective was to have our deployed men and women feel that we were with them, our presence was among them during the Christmas season.  That is how Operation Christmas "Presence" got its name.  It was never about what was in the package, but the love, the effort and the thought that went into it, providing our "presence" to our soldiers during the holiday season.

My goal was to provide about 100 soldiers with care packages.  God's goal was much larger and 1,346 care packages were sent during the Christmas 2006 holiday season.