Hippity Hoppity Easters on its way

So many of our troops know the loneliness of serving far from home during the holidays. They miss being with their families on Christmas, New Year's celebrations, exchanging sweet nothings for Valentines Day, Easter Sunday, and many other important celebrations. The holidays can be a very lonely time for our troops.

Easter will be celebrated on Sunday, April 17, so there is still plenty of time to reach out to our troops to show your support and thank them for a job well done. Nothing lifts a lonely soldier’s spirits like a letter from home. When you help sponsor an Easter package through our Care Package Program, your personal support message is included with our treats.

Most of our deployed soldiers are used to spending holidays away from loved ones but let’s make sure they know we are thinking about them and sending our love today. Peeps are only available for a limited time, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to include this iconic Easter classic in your troop support package.

Peeps are Back for Easter!

For a limited time only, we are proud to offer iconic squishy, sweet marshmallow Peeps in our seasonal Easter Troop Care Packages! We know our troops miss family time and all the wonderful traditions we at home often take for granted like Easter egg hunts and baskets full of goodies, visits from the Easter bunny, family gatherings for brunch or putting on our finest Spring duds to head off to our houses of worship to celebrate with friends and family.

Easter is full of traditions and one tradition Troopathon likes to carry on is our commitment to making sure our seasonal Easter packages for our troops contain Peeps. Whether you prefer the traditional yellow Peeps chick or you are all in on the rainbow bunny Peeps, our troops will be happy to see their Easter packages arriving with the seasonal fun of marshmallow Peeps. In addition, our care packages include items soldiers crave like gourmet coffee, beef jerky, cookies, Gatorade, lip balm, hand face wipes, energy gels, deodorant and other personal care items and treats to remind our troops that home isn’t really that far away after all.

FEDEX Cares Program Helps Deliver Support

Volunteers from the FEDEX Cares program pitch in to help pack and prep care packages

We've all heard the old adage "Team work makes the dream work," at Troopathon we see that slogan in action every day. Thanks to the dedicated team of volunteers from the FEDEX Cares program, who gave up hours of their personal time to come to our Sacramento headquarters to prep, pack and load up hundreds of boxes destined for our troops. These quiet heroes were thrilled to do lots of hard work with the reward of knowing in just a little bit, the packages they helped assemble were going to land in the hands of our troops, how satisfying is that?

We wanted to share some of our photos from the event, since we all know a picture is worth a thousand words.

We are so thankful for our continued partnership with FedEx and the FEDEX Cares program, it's volunteers from groups like this who allow us to continue our mission of troop support.

If you live in the Sacramento area and would like to learn more about our volunteer opportunities, reach out to Scott Raab, our Director of Outreach and he would be happy to discuss how you can help us support our troops. Scott can be reached at [email protected].

Here’s how we put packages into the hands of our troops

Just how do we know who to send care packages to? Seems like it might be complicated, but we’ve been doing this a long time. So, we’ve developed systems that make it easy for troops to sign up and allows us to make sure they get much-needed care packages without wasting shipments on troops who are no longer deployed.

We are often asked "How we know which soldiers are waiting for packages and if they really need or appreciate receiving a package and notes of support from someone they’ve never met like Gail L from Oklahoma or Lucia in Florida who sends her support and prayers?"

Troopathon has fulfilled our mission of supporting our deployed troops for over eighteen years. Heck, many of the troops we support were just little kids when we sent our first care packages out. We’ve learned a lot about troop support over the years; what products travel well, how to pack as much as possible into our sturdy shipping boxes, how to figure out when our troops will be coming home so we efficiently deliver packages, what our troops need, and more importantly what they want and crave from home.

During that time, we have developed many avenues to help our deployed soldiers receive packages from home. One of the most important and efficient tools we employ is ourSoldier Sign Up page that our troops or their representatives like a family member, chaplain or commander, can easily access to sign up for packages through our secure Soldier Sign Up system.

Our Soldier Sign Up allows our soldiers to give us some feedback, and even include a photo if they wish. We thought you might enjoy hearing directly from our troops that have signed up through our Soldier Sign Up system. We hope you enjoy reading what our troops have to say as much as we did.

These powerful words from our deployed troops humble us and remind us we are making a difference in the daily lives of our troops. If you are interested in supporting one of our troops, why not take the time to send one of our waiting troops a care package full of great treats like beef jerky, coffee, socks, personal care items and, best of all, a personal note of support from you.