ORCAS - Oregon Coast Avid Stampers

For more than a year, the Oregon Coast Avid Stampers (O.R.C.A.S.) have been handcrafting greeting cards and sending them to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, for their personal use. The O.R.C.A.S. would like to extend an invitation to everyone to participate in the "Cards For Troops To Send Home" project. Our troops need cards to send home to their loved ones to celebrate birthday, anniversaries, holidays, as well as sympathy and thank you cards. Imagine how happy a child would be to receive a Happy Birthday card from a parent stationed in a foreign land!

You can participate in several ways:

• If you are a rubber stamper, or do card crafting send your creations to the Coalition.
• If you belong to a rubber stamping or craft club, adopt "Cards for Troops to Send Home" as a club project.
• Send to:
     ORCAS, c/o Claudette Schroeder
     4300 N Hwy 101
      Depoe Bay, OR 97341
  
• Or purchase new greeting cards, boxes of all-occasion cards work great, and send them to the Coalition.

O.R.C.A.S. is a non-profit group with members from several coastal communities. They meet monthly to share stamping and paper crafting ideas, and to participate in learning experiences and outreach projects. Other O.R.C.A.S. programs include Christmas Tags for gifts to foster children; Keiki Cards for terminally ill children; and birthday cards for local nursing home residents.

Responses from the Troops

I am doing okay and thanking God for extraordinary people like you. I received a package with the most precious cards. I cannot say enough times thank you! For all that you do. I have sent a couple of them to my husband in Iraq and he loves them especially the frog ones. Thank you for making both of our days. Thank you for all of your support to the troops.
SPC Q.

Thank you so much for the great cards we received here. It will allow me to keep in touch with friends and family. I'm home in June to Corvallis and married in July.

I was in the Sinai, Egypt with the Salem OR National Guard unit in 2002 and met an avid stamper from Salem, OR. I also knew someone who worked for "The MAGAZINE" in Corvallis. All my best to your organization and thank you again.
SFC MW

My name is SPC S. L. and I am a soldier currently deployed to Afghanistan. I received two of the cards from your organization and I wanted to say thank you for sending them. Over here we don’t have much access to cards and being able to send a birthday card to my sister and a birthday card to my cousin, really meant a lot to me and also to them. I appreciate you thinking of the soldiers over here and I wanted to let you know how much it meant to me. If you have any extra cards, I would love to have them to send to people back home. I could use any kind of cards from birthday to anniversaries to special holidays. Thank you so much for all that you do to support the troops, knowing that you have our back is what keeps us going. My address is as follows and if you don't have any extra cards, I understand, thank you for the two that I already did receive. (Extra cards sent)
SPC L.

This is a belated thank you for the cards you sent a while ago. I've used them up. Thanks! I will be re-deploying soon so I will not be needing any more. I am excited about going home and finishing my degree. Take care and keep up the good work.
Sincerely, Nicole

Thank you again to your team. You all are wonderful, caring and loving people!! My team will put your cards to use. We all are in a group admiring your talents and efforts put in the cards!!

My team just got back in and have to refit and recover and we head back out! Your cards let us send from the heart back to our families and fits our time schedule.

The power your cards impact the soldiers and our families is breath taking.

Thank you again from our team #6785 embedded training team! God bless your group and America.
Sgt. JL

Thanks so much for the beautiful cards from ORCA (Oregon Coast Avid Stampers)! They are truly wonderful. I especially appreciate the time and creativity it took to hand make each one of them for us.

I am serving on a team with Sgt. J. L. and he has shared the cards with us. I have used some of your Thank you cards to thank some of the folks who send us care packages – people we don’t know, who care about us, like you do. I make a point to let them know the thank-you card was created by hand for us.

Thanks again for your generosity!
Sgt. 1st Class JC Afghanistan

Thank You, we really appreciated your thoughtfulness. The soldiers are very appreciative of the goodies; because we are in an area with no American Exchange, the cards are very helpful as well to sending notes back to love ones. Again thank you. It is great to know we have your support.
God Bless LTC VG.

My name is M. Q, I am currently deployed in Afghanistan with 70th En Bn, I'm 21 years old and happily married to a wonderful man F. M. currently deployed in Iraq with 1-30 Infantry Battalion, he’s 24 years old.

We would like to thank the "ORCAS" Oregon Coast Avid Stampers, and all its supporters. We really appreciated your organization for providing us with greeting cards to share with our love ones. I really like, enjoy, and appreciate them.

My husband loves the ones I select for him mostly the ones: I miss you, thinking of you. Once again in behalf of him and I Thank you so much.
Sincerely SPC M.Q. and SPC FM

Thank you for hooking us up with Father's Day cards. Love them.

For more information about the "Cards For Troops To Send Home" project, other outreach programs, or O.R.C.A.S. club membership contact:
Claudette Schroeder
Phone: 541-764-8914
Email: