Eleven-year-old Savannah Maddison just wanted to help her best friend’s father when he was deployed to Afghanistan earlier this year, so she wrote him a song. After a bit, she realized there were a whole bunch of soldiers, sailors and marines serving in the Middle East who might not be getting letters from anyone. So she launched a letter-writing campaign that, less than a year later, is responsible for sending more than 30,000 notes of encouragement to American military personnel abroad. The program is called Savannah’s Soldiers, and its Florida-based founder hopes her efforts have only just begun. “It has changed my life completely,” she says. (New York Daily News)

Paul Asay has covered religion for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for Plugged In and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He lives in Colorado Springs with wife, Wendy, and two children. Follow him on Twitter.