Youth group deploys Operation Love Our Soldier

Intermountain Catholic

+ Enlarge

Holy Family youth group members package items to be sent to Hill Air Force Base personnel who are serving overseas. IC photo/Marie Mischel

OGDEN — More than 100 military members attached to Hill Air Force Base who are serving overseas will receive packages of love sent by the Holy Family Parish youth group, which completed their "Operation Love Our Soldiers" on Feb. 25.

Youth group members collected donations of lip balm, hygiene products, snacks, crossword puzzle books and other items sought after by military personnel serving overseas.

"The kids said they wanted to do something for the men in the armed forces," said Mika Newberry, the youth group coordinator. She discussed the idea with a friend who works at Hill AFB. The friend contacted a master sergeant who is currently deployed, "and she said, ‘yeah, we’d love it, we’d love it, we’d love it. Do it, do it, do it!"

Newberry also consulted with a soldier who had just returned from overseas about what items would be most appreciated.

"They don’t get a whole lot of packages and stuff," said Ross Wille, chair of the Youth Council, about the 147 service members who will receive the collected items.

Many of the youth group members donated items, others came from parishioners, many of whom have family serving in the military, Wille said.

This was the first time the youth group conducted Operation Love Our Soldiers, but service projects are an integral part of the group’s activities, said Wille, who has been a member for four years. "The youth group is fun and stuff, but it’s also part of the community and making it a better place by helping the community."

"We’ve always been interested in helping with different projects; we’ve done many different things," agreed Austin Spell, who has been with the group about three years. "It’s fun to just get together and do stuff and help out other people in the process."

One of the group’s newest members is Isabelle Fernandez, who began attending about a year ago. "The best part is the people," she said. "They’re so welcoming. When I first came nobody knew me, but they were just so welcoming and so nice." Being active in the group "helps me pray more, and we do a lot of community work, and that helps me appreciate my faith," she added.

Fernandez and the other youth group members already are looking forward to the 24-hour food fast in the spring, a charity fundraiser during which they go without food for an entire day, and sleep on the parish lawn to understand the experience of homelessness.

"It’s actually not that bad the first couple of hours, but the next day you really want something to eat," Wille said.