Several years ago Denise DeVynck started making care packages for Utah soldiers deployed overseas during Christmas. The first year she made 150 packages. This Christmas she will make 444 packages with help from people all over Utah.

"Everyone in Utah steps up and donates something," said DeVynck, who started Letters to Soldiers, a volunteer program that sends letters, care packages and support to troops in the Middle East.

Dozens of students at Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy in Lindon decorated cards and banners to send to the Army Reserves 405th and 96th brigades in Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively, on Wednesday.

She visits schools all over Utah throughout the year to gather cards, banners and letters that the students have made and other items for care packages.

On Saturday, DeVynck and volunteers will be boxing up the packages, making cards and banners and video e-mails from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Payson High School.

Each package costs $10 to ship, so Letters to Soldiers is also sponsoring a silent auction at the event and looking for donations to reach the desired goal of $4,440.

Organizers also need the following items donated for the care packages: shoes, paperback books, games, toys, candy, small posters, women's personal care products, Gold Bond and other foot products, card-making supplies and stationary, sweat shirts and T-shirts, white ankle socks, jerky, dried soups, dried fruit and other snacks, CDs, DVDs, computer games, small Christmas decorations, vitamins, soccer balls, school supplies to give to poor Iraqi and Afghani children and nonperishable, dry drink and food items (not in glass or cans).

"I'm never going to stop sending them packages," DeVynck said after sharing some of the responses she's received from soldiers.