The Story of the All Saints Booth Sale

Posted Tuesday, April 3, 2007

It was the most amazing experience. Today we learned that the people of Manassas care deeply about America’s soldiers in Iraq.

March 18th, 2007 – Mrs. McIntyre and I arrived at All Saints Church at 8 am to set up the cookie booth with our daughters. It was 32 degrees. We set up our cookie booth complete with the six foot sign that the Brownie troop made advertising the Gift of Caring. Mrs. Rosato and her daughter joined us and for the next 45 minutes we stood there in the cold and sold 15 boxes of cookies with one parent rotating the girls into the school gym to warm up from the cold.

We thought that we were doing great. We expected to sell about 80 boxes total for the day. The large Gift of Caring sign was doing its job. Most of the people that approached us did so because they saw the sign and wanted to send cookies to America’s soldiers in Iraq. Everyone else walked around us and hurried to their cars to get out of the cold.

Before the 9 am mass some replacements arrived so two of our frozen Girl Scouts and their mothers went home to thaw out. I saw Father Bob and I gave him a letter explaining that our troop was selling cookies to send to the 82nd Airborne Division at combat outpost (COP) Callahan in Baghdad, Iraq. The letter described the conditions that the soldiers are living in based on a story that I had read on their webpage. In the letter to Father Bob I explained that we would like to send each of the 400 soldiers of the 82nd a box of cookies and that to do that we would need to sell 300 boxes of cookies today. I never dreamed that we would make that goal! I don’t know what Father said during the 9 am mass but after it ended we were overwhelmed with customers. We sold 77 boxes of cookies between 9 and 10:30 - most of them in the 15 minutes after the 9 am mass ended.

We had two more shift changes and Father Bob made another announcement at the 10:30 and 12:00 masses. We sold 380 boxes after those two masses combined. That’s roughly 190 boxes per mass, sold mostly within 15 minutes of the mass ending.

The wonderful people of All Saints braved the cold and stood in long lines in order to send cookies to our troops in the 82nd. They were touched that our troop was using its portion of the proceeds to ship the cookies to the soldiers and they liked being able to sign the cards that the girls made, taping them to the box of cookies and putting them in the shipping box.

Those 15 minutes of selling after the masses was unbelievable. Statistically it works out to roughly 12.6 boxes sold per minute or a little over 1 box every 5 seconds. Our cashiers at each shift were bombarded with money. The Brownies were running the cookies and handmade cards that the people were signing for the troops back and forth between the table and the shipping boxes. People handed us $20 dollar bills and said “send as many cookies to the troops as this will buy and keep the change.” The rush was so intense that we lost track of our tallies and the extra money that people were donating.

And when the selling rush was all done, we stood in the cold, with no customers in sight, and shook our heads in amazement at what had just occurred. When I got home and figured out our totals I was shocked.

We ended up selling 472 boxes of cookies today – 190 for personal use and an amazing 282 for the soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division. When we combine that with the boxes that we had previously sold for the Gift of Caring we have 489 boxes of cookies to send to the soldiers in Iraq. This will easily cover the 400 boxes for the 82nd and the boxes for the other units in Iraq that we want to send cookies to.

Thank you so much for braving the cold and for all of your hard work and team work. Together we touched a lot of people’s lives today and we’ll bring a little joy to many soldiers.

God Bless You!

Mrs. Crocker
Cookie Mom
Brownie Troop #2578