Soldiers give away presents

MOSES LAKE - Moses Lake National Guard soldiers stood along Third Avenue in Moses Lake giving away presents.

The group had roughly 1,000 wrapped presents for children. The presents included Teddy bears, puzzles, toy cars, girl's jewelry and Barbie dolls and were wrapped by a Desert Springs Community Church youth group.

Staff Sgt. Justin Morris had the idea to give away the presents along Third Avenue a few days prior to arranging it, he said.

"We wrap them up and go and distribute them out to neighborhoods. We did that the last couple of years, but the problem was we would go knocking on a door and you just never knew what you were going to run into," Morris said. "We just decided to come downtown and set up a table and kind of a production line thing and put them in bags ... and just pass them out."

The toys are donated to the National Guard to go to the children of soldiers, but they end up having a lot of toys left after giving them away.

"We don't have a lot of troops that live here in the local community. They come out from Yakima, Lind, Grand Coulee. They come into Moses Lake or they come into Ephrata, so they've already had their Christmas party. They gave them out as gifts, and they still have 10 boxes left over," he said. "So this is one way that we're giving them out."

He pointed out a lot of people were suffering, and Morris passed his card out to people, and he received calls about getting toys to children.

"I went and delivered those personally because I knew they'd give me addresses and I'd go and deliver those," he said. "As we're doing this, we recognize a lot of people that I've met in the last 10 and a half years."

All the soldiers handing out presents volunteered to distribute the gifts, Morris said.

"Most of the people we've seen drive through here told us, 'Hey we don't need these things. Give them to someone else that needs them," he said. "I said, 'Well, if you hear of anybody, send them down here. Put it on Facebook. Whatever you can do to get the word out that we're going to be down here.'"

Morris plans to do the same event next year, he said.