Celebrating our independence and freedom calls for a big party.
And yet there are men and women with children and families that are still sacrificing their lives for the rest of us to continue to live in that day to day liberty.
While the majority of us clock in and out of our daily jobs to support our families, there are men and women that tolerate the spoils of war for their paycheck.
Because of our unique location in Orange County, many are familiar with the military lifestyle as families are temporarily based on assignment at Camp Pendleton.
Sally Hales knows that life all too well as her husband served as a fighter pilot for the first five years of their marriage. Sally attends Coast Hills Church, a close partner of the Orange County Rescue Mission, volunteering primarily with the church’s food pantry. Because of her experience and passion for our country, Sally pursued an organization at Camp Pendleton to see how she could pay it forward to the families serving on this nearby military base. Ten years later, Sally continues to visit the base for a once a month BBQ and food distribution for the families currently residing on site.

With 20-30 volunteers Sally has been able to distribute food and hygiene items to these families in service once a month, seeing some familiar faces for seven consecutive years. With up to 120 families, only four of these have less than three children. This is where the Rescue Mission has been able to assist in providing truck loads of diapers and additional pallets of food boxes from our partnership with Feed the Children. Sally has held free yard sales for the military families, gifted Avon boxes and even delivered up to 500 gifts to kids over the Christmas holiday. However, the most important element of her faithful service to these families is the gift of prayer. While distributing gifts and necessities, Sally has seen up to 100 prayer requests as she and her friends will quietly sit with families and intercede on their behalf while visiting the base.

Where Sally is quick to share that our military are certainly not going hungry, this is a fantastic way to honor those that are serving our country. Helping provide basics like food and diapers for these families allows the wiggle room in their tight budget to afford signing a daughter up for ballet, taking the family to Knott’s or when dad is deployed, mom can afford the plane ticket home to be near family on holidays.
In fact, because of the faithful service of Sally and Coast Hills volunteers, Sally recently received a call of gratitude from a squadron wife sharing that because of these consistent gifts, as her husband is now retiring from service, they have been able to pinch enough pennies to afford a home to transition into with their family.

These are the faces of the men, women and families that pay the price for the rest of us to enjoy our freedom. This is one way we can thank them for their service and gratefully celebrate our independence on the 4th of July knowing that we can say thank you to the right people for ensuring our enjoyment of this great country we get to call home.
If you would like to help us contribute to this service, we collect food, diapers, cleaning products, laundry detergent and other hygiene items to supply to Coast Hills Church food pantry for their generosity. Thank you Sally and Coast Hills for being a conduit on the ground for serving those that serve our country.