The story heard around the world or "It's A Small World After All"

What follows is a quote from E-mail received from the head of TOP (Tours of Peace):

By the way, your article made it around the world on the Internet. I was forwarded the article by one of our vets who is currently living in Sri Lanka. The article was forwarded to him by another veterans organization to him. He said, "I thought you would like to see this." He also said, he wished he could meet you two.

Wow...what next??? we have been very moved by the strength of positive stories and the generosity of people. We received another e-mail from a Vietnam veteran somewhere who read our article and is going to send $100 to help with excess baggage charges on the items we are taking over. I responded with our mailing address and a big THANK YOU!

In actuality, I am trying my best to avoid those excess baggage charges by being very creative with my packing and planning to be very persuasive at the ticket check in counter (yes, I can do a very sympathetic "help us help the needy" plead).

If I am as successful as I hope to be then any and all contributions we get can instead purchase additional medical supplies and other living necessities needed for the schools and homes while we are over there. We are told we will be able to purchase medical supplies cheaper there than here...I guess that is not surprising.

Saturday morning we went to a meeting of our Oregon Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Association. They wanted to hear more about what we were working to do in Vietnam, in terms of humanitarian causes. As a result the association issued us a donation check for $200 and the general membership "passed the hat" which resulted in an additional $100. Wow, what $300 will do over there. They also gave me a valuable contact name that may come up with some brand new t-shirts to include in our loot to take over. Not quite sure at this point where I will put them to take over but if the volume and value dictates it then I will get real creative! and if we need to move on into an additional bag.

At this point I have everything literally "crammed" into our 4 very large bags and 2 carryons. We even ended up with a couple changes of clothes for ourselves which I am sure our fellow travelers will appreciate as the trip and the heat wears on.

When I say "everything", in addition to all the school supplies, pencils, rulers, combs, barrettes, etc, etc, we ended up with a total of 111 pieces of adult clothing and 336 pieces of infant and children's clothing. We also have 30 brimmed ball caps (someone had cleaned out their hat collection the day we were at the Goodwill outlet) and 65 small beanie baby animals.

I have to say that this has all come together in such a way that personally my heart is full to the brim and spilling over. I have wanted to do something special like this for ever so long and here we are living the dream!!!

Thanks to everyone out there who have been so supportive, you are all a part of this.