April 2020 Newsletter

American Troops Celebrate Easter Far from Home and Safety

Easter 2020, featured empty churches their services broadcast over local radio or live streamed on the internet while families quietly celebrated at home, doing their best to carve normalcy out of a world holding its collective breath waiting for the COVID-19 pandemic to subside.

This feeling of anxiety and separation gives us a small glimpse of what our American Troops face year after year as they endure separation far from home, loved one, friends, their lives and safety at constant risk.

Humble thanks to all of you who, while dealing with your own challenges still chose to share your love and support for our troops. Thanks to your selfless devotion our troops are receiving thousands of Easter care packages.

We are happy and relieved to once again supply our troops with special Easter care packages featuring messages of support from you as well as special Easter treats like marshmallow Peeps, candy, cookies, coffee, personal care items that will bring a little cheer and memories of better times.

This year was a successful Easter drive thanks to you!  It’s nice to know while we were all here at home missing our normal traditions like egg hunts and Easter feasts celebrating with family and loved ones in person, thanks to the generous support of Move America Forward donors, many of our  deployed troops  have or will soon receive a little taste of home and tradition.

We set an Easter goal of $10,000 in packages by Easter Sunday, which we achieved even if just barely. Overall, we raised about $ 10,740 given the unprecedented challenges this Easter season we are amazed by your generous spirit.

Thanks to your generosity, our troops will enjoy the hundreds of care packages we were able to send and as always, we will continue our year-round support of our troops with your help!

Although Easter is now behind us, the troops always appreciate a package from home complete with a personal note from you.  Why not take the time to send a package now if you have not done so recently.

We’d also like to take a moment to thank all of our volunteers who helped us pack up many of those packages before we were no longer able to enlist the help of our volunteers for their safety as well as for the safety of our troops who receive our Easter packages.

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FREE E-Book or Audio Book Download

To receive this beautiful story simply do any of the following:

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– Tag a friend below who you think would LOVE this book

– DM @girlwith35names Instagram with your email so they can send you the download code!

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A Message from MAF on COVID-19 Response

While we considered shutting down all operations, as many businesses have done, we were reminded that our troops NEVER take a day off. For the time being, Move America Forward continues to ship care packages overseas to troops on the front lines.

As the devastating effects of the COVID-19 epidemic show up all over the world, and so many states, including our own California enforcing \”shelter in place\” orders, we want all our supporters to know that Move America Forward takes this virus threat very seriously.

Move America Forward regularly ships large amounts of hand sanitizers and disinfecting wipes as part of our care package program. We have enough stock on hand to continue sending these in our boxes. Though we have tried to source face masks and gloves, they are very hard to come by right now, but if anyone in the community is able to donate these items, please send them! We will add them to our boxes for the troops as much as possible.

Last week MAF shipped over 2,500 boxes. Another 1,500 boxes will be shipping this Monday right after Easter Sunday. Our staff continues to work on a limited schedule while taking great precautions to maintain social distancing, disinfect everything, and maintain the utmost possible cleanliness to safeguard the health of our troops while continuing our mission to send them support.

Because the office is officially closed, we are not allowing the hundreds of volunteers who usually help pack the care packages come into the office, but the staff is coming in voluntarily to get these care packages out to the troops in harms’ way.

Whether it\’s a threat from terrorist groups or coronavirus, our troops still put their lives at risk every day to accomplish their missions and keep our country safe. We have so much respect for their service, we knew that we simply MUST keep supporting them, sending care packages, and sending the troops much needed supplies even now.

We take as many protective measures as possible to protect our staff and troops from the possibility of infection, but we want to make it clear that our troops will still get the support they need from us, and we thank YOU for YOUR continued support in such troubling times.

Pray for our Troops Celebrating Passover

In Jewish tradition, one of the most holy celebrations is the week long celebration of Passover. Passover began at sundown on April 8, 2020 and the first night of Passover is traditionally celebrated with a seder, or meal featuring unleavened bread, and the retelling of the Passover story.

Our Jewish troops usually look forward celebrating together and enjoying a traditional seder complete with specific foods and rituals where the story of the Exodus from Egypt is told. This is a beloved tradition for our Jewish troops, and like Christian celebration of Easter, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted this comforting and uniting tradition. We unite to offer blessings to our Jewish Troops and send wishes of a Happy Passover.

Shopping on Amazon? Use Smile.Amazon to help support MAF

With so many of us shopping from home these days, take the extra step to help support Move America Forward the Amazon Smile Non-Profit Program, Amazon donates a portion of whatever you order to MAF so we can send even more support packages to our troops!

Thousands of Americans are shopping at home to avoid risking our heath or the health of others and with so many of our favorite shops closed, Amazon is the natural go to. So while you are shopping maximize your troops support by logging into Smile.Amazon.com and use your regular login then select Move America Forward as the charity you would like to support and a small portion of what you buy on Amazon.com is then automatically donated to MAF. No extra cost to you, just extra support for our brave defenders for buying the things you normally would. It will even keep track of how much you have personally generated for your selected charity. It doesn\’t cost you one cent more and it doesn\’t delay your shipping. It is just a simply way to maximize your donations.

Millions of Americans already use Amazon to purchase clothes, books and movies to tech gadgets, or almost anything you can think of. Chances are, if you\’ve ever bought anything on-line, you have probably used Amazon.com at least once or twice.

Now with Amazon Smile, you can support Move America Forward at no cost to you, by doing all your regular shopping with Amazon Smiles. Your gifts will cost nothing extra, but a portion of the sales will be donated by AMAZON to the troops via MAF!

Simply go to smile.amazon.com and login with your existing Amazon account or create a new one using your preferred email. You need to search for and select Move America Forward from the charity list and select it, then when you ship amazon, be sure to login through their smile.amazon.com page.

Stay Safe, stay home and help our troops at the same time!

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