For more than a year now, Walgreen’s customers have been asked if they’d like to “treat the troops,” and they’ve said, “YES.” Every week candy flows into the Packages From Home Packing Center to be boxed up and shipped to the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That candy has brought many smiles across the miles. Walgreen’s has also donated toothpaste, toothbrushes, dental floss, and mouthwash, among other things. When one recreation center director was asked how many boxes of toothpaste, etc., she’d like to have, her response was, “Two boxes should be enough to brush away the chocolate they get on their teeth…”

One of the chaplains wrote, “The soldiers accuse me of getting them hooked on Chocolate before we got here, and now that we are here, they give me a rough (Playful) time because I can’t get them their fix of Chocolate!!” Thanks to the generosity of Walgreen’s customers, we were able to get that chaplain (and many others) out of the hot seat!

Thanks to DHL, we were able to send 11,000 pounds of chocolate, for free, to our troops in Afghanistan. That made for a great start of the new year!

Most recently one of the chaplain’s assistants in Iraq asked for extra candy for their Valentine’s Day celebration. Here’s the news we received from her:

“We delivered candy to the individuals as they sat at the dining table in the dining hall, and we had two tables filled with chocolate and gum which was part of the packages for the diners, which we constantly replenished with candy. We remained in the dining facility from 1045 hrs to a little after 1400 hrs distributing candy. When we left everyone had had their fill.

Many could not believe their eyes, nor did they believe it was free.

It was like kids in a candy store and indeed it was like a candy store).”