Volunteers filled boxes on Nov. 19 for deployed U.S. servicemen and women. Those boxes filled with goodies and holiday items brighten the Christmas season for many military people far from home. The theme this season was “Follow the Star.”
Lonnie DeVorss oversees the local program that the Harmony Baptist Association sponsors. DeVorss noted the first packages went out in April 2008 for the Easter holiday. Project Parachute mails items five times yearly for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Fourth of July, fall, and Christmas. Boxes are mailed four to six weeks ahead. It is a program propelled by volunteers from 27 churches in the association.
“It’s open to any individual,” DeVorss noted. “Even though the Harmony Baptist Association sponsors it, we don’t ask what religion they are. It’s open to everybody.”
To register someone for the project, one needs to call the HBA office and supply the military person’s name, their deployment address, and the date they are due back in the United States.
“The largest shipment I ever sent was 155 packages,” DeVorss said. “I was at the post office for four and a half hours. I never expected those kinds of numbers ….
“Then also locally we support veterans,” she continued. “We’ve done numerous things. We have given out free coffee and pie over at North 65 (Café). We’ve done a breakfast at the VFW. In fact, the head of the VFW right now (Lee Whited), I just talked to him a few weeks ago, and we’ll be co-working with them for a breakfast.”
She added sometimes they place tables at local businesses and pass out boxes of candy to say thank you to veterans.
The number of mailed boxes or envelopes changes each time depending on how many names are turned into the program.
“We had 61 last year at this time,” DeVorss said. “Right now, we’ve got 14, but we’ll pack 17 just because we usually get a few more names in. But that’s how much it fluctuates.”
This year, items placed into the boxes included homemade cookies, candy, crafts, cards, a full-size Bible, and Christmas lights.
“We’ve gotten lists from chaplains with needs like wipes and plastic silverware and things like that,” she noted. “And we’ve mailed that before, a couple of times.”
DeVorss added among the 27 churches in the association, many donate regularly. The most significant change since 2008 is the cost of mailing the flat-rate boxes. The cost of the boxes has increased from $10 to $23. Donations, such as one from Ramey Construction of Sedalia, help with those expenses.
“You walk in there (post office), and you end up spending $1,000,” she added. “Everything is pretty much donated for inside the box.
“Ramey’s Construction, they stepped up and volunteered to ship these Christmas boxes,” she continued. “But most of the time, it’s the churches.”
Staff Sgt. Gracie Haugen, the daughter of volunteer Melissa Turner, has seen how vital the boxes are firsthand. Haugen is stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base with her husband, Michael Haugen, a veteran. During one of the deployments, the Sedalia boxes went to went to a friend, Fahn, who was killed.
“He got killed in a roll-over accident in Kuwait,” Haugen explained. “He was really young, a really good guy — but the boxes got there shortly after he’d passed.
“It was really good for them to see that the people back home still cared,” she continued. “Because when something like that happens, you feel secluded. I saw the devotions in there helped a lot of people. It definitely brought God closer in a hard time.”
The next Project Parachute shipment will be in mid-January, with large envelopes of Valentines sent for Valentine’s Day. People can donate Valentines, pictures drawn by children, and other holiday items by bringing them to the Harmony Baptist Association, 1950 state Highway TT in Sedalia, which is open from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
For more information, call the Harmony Baptist Association at 816-682-1824 or 660-631-3331 or DeVorss at 660-620-2391.
Faith Bemiss-McKinney can be reached at 660-530-0289.
