At his kitchen table on Saturday morning, Gary Sorensen carefully folded the flaps of a small cardboard mailing box together and noisily applied a strip of packing tape.

"It's amazing what you can get in this little package," he said, beaming as he moved the box from the table to a growing stack of similar boxes next to the cupboard.

Tennis ball, toothbrush, candy canes, Top Ramen, hand sanitizer, newspapers and magazines: Each of those breadbox-sized containers indeed brimmed full of the small comforts of home.

Less visibly, but perhaps more important, each one also spilled over with the devotion and respect of a small group of Missoula volunteers who, for the past two years, have gathered once every three months to assemble care packages for soldiers they will likely never meet.

"The biggest challenge is getting enough names (of soldiers)," said Sorensen. "But somehow we always come up with enough, and we get enough stuff to put in the boxes, so it works out pretty good in the end."

As Sorensen taped another package, Cindy Babon walked into the kitchen from the adjoining dining room, where a group of women were busy filling each box. "I think I'll stand around and look cute for a while," said Babon with a laugh. But within minutes, she was back in the dining room, circling the table with a box, filling it with small items from the stacks on the table.

A plate of homemade cookies and a pot of coffee on the kitchen counter sat untouched all morning.

It's like this every time, said Charlie Crookshanks, the longtime member of the Western Montana Military Officers Association, which has organized the quarterly care package drive since late 2007. Throughout the year, Crookshanks leads the effort to gather donations of items and money to fund the mailings. Then, one Saturday, the 12 members of the care package committee gather at the Sorensens' house and get down to business, stuffing the boxes and addressing them in assembly line fashion.

Each box contains about $25 worth of items, and costs $11.95 to mail. It works out to about $1,800 per mailing to send approximately 50 boxes. With Saturday's mailing, the group stood at 428 boxes mailed.

Most go to soldiers from Montana. However, military privacy policies make it impossible for the group of volunteers to obtain official lists of soldiers. Instead, they must rely on family friends, churches and other sources to assemble names.

"We focus on Montana soldiers," said Crookshanks, "but we never turn down anybody."

This shipment - the last before the holidays - included a typical array of everyday needs and comforts, not only for troops but also for the locals they encounter.

"We always try to give them stuff to give to the locals - extra candy, tennis balls, first aid supplies, that kind of thing," said Mary Pat Malerk. "It helps them build community relationships, which is really important."

For this shipment, students at Meadow Hill Middle School donated handmade holiday cards and bags of candy canes. Students from the Frenchtown Junior High student council added bags of jelly beans. And Martha's Ministries of Polson added hand-knitted hats for troops facing the cold Afghani winters.

Some of what the group sends to the troops is donated, but much of it is purchased, to assure that it's exactly what the soldiers want and need, said Crookshanks.

"Somebody said you're doing so much; I said, it's the least we can do, with what those guys are doing over there," he said.

These quarterly gatherings have come to mean a lot to the members of the group as well. But none of them hesitate to say, they'll be happy when they stop getting together.

"We want those wars over," said Sorensen.

"The pictures we get back, especially from Afghanistan, are just brutal," added Don Malerk, Mary Pat's husband. "So hopefully this just helps bring them something that reminds them of our appreciation."

For Don and Mary Pat, the care package committee has special meaning: Their own son will graduate from the Reserve Officers Training Corps program in December and will likely wind up serving time in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"As you can see," said Mary Pat as she gazed at the table laden with gifts for the troops, "we're really blessed."

Reporter Joe Nickell can be reached at 523-5358 or at jnickell@missoulian.com.