From Nevada, kindness flows overseas

He hands out candy and toys to the children of Najil and other villages tucked among the rugged mountains of northeastern Afghanistan.

Smiles fill their faces when he arrives.

Instead of a sack, he slings a rifle over his shoulder. And, instead of a red suit and a fuzzy red cap with a snowball tassel, he wears camouflaged clothes and a Kevlar helmet.

Santa Claus he is not, but his aim is the same.

It's all about giving but with an added twist to bridge a cultural gap.

It's about making a difference in a poor child's life, one who has never had a toy, or a coloring book, or a crayon, or even a pencil to scribble out a wish list.

Sgt. Adam Fenner, an Army National Guard medic from Las Vegas, does it as a matter of routine on every patrol he goes out on with soldiers from Nevada's 1st Squadron, 221st Cavalry. This month, they are midway through a yearlong deployment with the International Security Assistance Force in war-torn Afghanistan.

"This isn't something that I'm specifically doing for Christmas," he wrote in an e-mail Wednesday. "This is an Islamic country after all."

Regardless of religion, the giving spirit seems to be working.

"The children here are like kids anywhere else," the 26-year-old Fenner wrote. "They are curious and are still forming their opinions of their culture and ours.

"I know that this is the type of campaign that will take a lot more than the length of my stay to win," he said. "And winning the hearts of the children even a small bit is a step in the right direction for shaping the future leaders of Afghanistan towards a positive relationship with the Western world."

Back home in Southern Nevada he has had a lot of help with carrying out the good-will plan he hatched with Venetian entertainer Lance Taubold and their mutual friend, Patti Diamond of Pahrump.

For the past couple months, folks in Pahrump at Diamond's urging have been sending supplies to keep Fenner's bag stocked with handouts, everything from suckers to stuffed animals.

The response has been tremendous, said Taubold, an opera tenor who met Fenner about four years ago, when Fenner was a security guard at Paris Las Vegas, where Taubold was performing on the Strip.

"He's hoping to help the people help themselves," Taubold said. "He wants the people to really understand why we're there."

To get the plan started, Diamond and a friend posted an advertisement seeking help from Pahrump citizens to send toys, crayons and coloring books to Fenner. They also asked for other supplies for soldiers in his unit such as canned tuna, jerky and spices.

"Every day there are bags and bags on my front doorstep," Diamond said.

One woman who has been saving stuffed animals and toys for three decades donated her 400-piece menagerie to the cause.

Diamond also sought help from local businesses to help cover postage costs.

In his e-mail Wednesday, Fenner said the effort is taking hold.

"I have been able to see the effects of this when we dismount throughout our area," he said. "The children in many of the villages will come out and follow us. ... Many of them actually recognize me" as the medic.

"They say, 'Daktar, Daktar, chokaleyt,'" he wrote, phonetically, referring to their image of him as a "doctor."

"The kids are going to be raised with the beliefs from their elders but if these kids are able to remember the small things that we did to put a smile on their faces ... they may not view us as the bad guys that some of them are taught to believe," Fenner said.

He and Taubold have been documenting their experiences for a book, "Surviving Afghanistan: Adam and Lance -- Their Story."

"We write a chapter and send the book back and forth to each other," Taubold said.

Taubold's role is to highlight the back-home perspective.

"I can't be the only one who's worried about a friend overseas," he said. "People might realize they're not in constant danger, (but) I'd rather know what's happening than not."

In an excerpt from a chapter, "Awards I Never Wanted," Fenner writes about the experience of reaching into his cargo pocket to hand out candy, toys and small stuffed animals.

"The older boys laughed at me but encouraged their younger brothers to take the suckers and various other treats. ... To the youngest, I passed out a stuffed, purple dolphin. I tried to show him how it swims in the water.

"But he would never even see a picture of a dolphin, let alone understand all the fun facts about them that American children learn. ... To a similarly aged boy I gave a small tiger. The two of them ran off down an alley playing with their new toys," Fenner wrote.

With a camera mounted on his helmet, he managed to capture the scene of them, in his words, "nervously taking the toys from my hand, and the smile that quickly grew across their faces before they ran off."

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.