Weeds in the Fields...

I want to move a message to the main blog tonight as not much has happened lately. Same medical complaints and issues as we have every day. But today I was exercising at the gym on the cardio-glide and I was listening to the book of Matthew on my Ipod and a verse touched me a little. I have often wondered why God allows His people to be placed in a world that is full of sin. Certainly, God has the ability to get rid of those things that distract us and choke us out. But then I heard this verse and some of my questions were answered.

Matthew 13:24-30 24 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, 25 but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds [3] among the wheat and went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. 27 And the servants [4] of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn."

I started thinking about how as Christian, we are surrounded with weeds. I am not talking just about non-Christian people but other weeds that have the goal of taking us from Christ. Temptations and distractions in our lives like inappropriate entertainment, demanding jobs, gossip, laziness, apathy, marital strife, broken relationships, illnesses, etc. These are things that we have all asked God, why do these things exist when all they do is try to choke out our relationship with God and threaten our personal growth.

In this parable, the owner of the field could have told his servant to pull the weeds, but he didn't. He knew that his crop was still growing and needed to be protected from the damage that would come from removing the weeds. He new that his seeds were planted in good soil and could grow, even in the weeds, if they were nurtured and allowed to mature.

We are the Lord's crop and he is fully aware of the weeds that surrounds us. He knows that we are still growing and learning and in need of time to mature our relationship with Him. In 2 Peter 3:9 the scripture says that, 'The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but have ever lasting life.'

I take some encouragement from this as I understand that God is letting His crop's grow and mature. He also knows that there will be weeds that will try to choke us out. But if we continue to understand that we are planted in good soil; and if we keep growing towards the sun; and continue soaking up the water that leads to life; then we will survive the weeds and will be ready for harvest on that great day.

Take heart when you are feeling like the weeds are closing in around you. Christ hasn't left you. He is just being a prudent farmer and is being patient so that you and I can can grow and others can come to know.

God Bless,

Jeff

Help Has Arrived...

Well, this week we finally received two of our three new physicians, Dr. Andy Altman and Dr. Rod McPhee. and an old friend of mine, Colonel David Obanion who is our new Chief of Dental Services. Andy is a family practice physician working our of Tennessee, Rod is an internist and allergist from Detroit, and Dave is from the Great Hoosier State. I have had the pleasure of serving with Col. Obanion for ten years or more and he has been a great influence on me as I came up the officer ranks. I met him when I was a relatively new lieutenant and he and I have worked together on and off since then. I am glad to have him on board and look forward to working with him on this tour.

Dr. Altman and Dr. McPhee have jumped right in and started working. We didn't give them much of an opportunity to get used to the environment. I placed them on the schedule the second day they arrived and they have really been an asset. We are going to do well with them as a part of our team and we look forward to their insight and guidance and partnership. I will place photos of our new team here soon.


Well, we have finally dried up our area. Our maintenance NCO's were able to locate a few pumps and they pumped out the water for us. However, it started to rain again today, so we may have to do this all over again.


We finally were able to hook all of the officers up to the internet. Mike has been able to resume his teaching duties at Butler. I have been amazed at his persistence. In Kuwait, we were having some issues and Mike was actually in a bunker recording a physiology lecture. Now, that's devotion.


Our patient load has been quite heavy. We have been seeing a lot of orthopedic injuries and weirdly enough a fair share of colitis. Mostly it is the nationals who have colitis but when one of them comes in with abdominal pain we do a CT scan and sure enough almost all of them have some type of ulcerative colitis or regular run of the mill colitis. I am not sure why that is as most of these guys eat the same foods that we do. Perhaps they are not as accustomed to our diet as we may assume.



Our vaccination section is doing amazing business. Sgt. Edwards our NCO of our vaccination section reported her team has given over 1000 vaccinations this week alone. I had a visit from the OIC of the Air Force clinic today. He is taking over just as I am, so we got together to hammer out duties. We are seeing some Air Force troops and he is seeing some of our Army guys so we will need to track eachother's people and share our stats for our monthy medical assets meeting with the hospital commander. Anyway, he said that his clinic has given over 4000 vaccinations in the last two weeks or so. Mostly, we and they are giving the flu vaccine, but we have the other vaccines like anthrax, MMR, hepatitis, etc... So, we are staying busy.


I think we are getting into a routine, finally. I have arranged weekly meetings with my provider staff and with the shift leaders and I think we will finally hammer out a nice consistent schedule for our medics.


I have been most impressed with the lengths that the military goes to take care of not only its military troops but the local working population. Make no doubt about it. The military is using your tax dollars to do good work here. You will never see the successes here but they are plenty. There is two ways in which you can influence a country. One is through dominance and dictatorship which leads to resistance and rebellion; and the other is through winning the hearts and mind of the people and encouraging and empowering them to handle their own affairs. The military has chosen the latter. It takes time but it is working. It is clear that the Iraqi people want peace as well. But it is important to understand that they have not had the opportunity to have representative democracy for at least two generations. So, it will take time for them to step up and do those things that took our country years to accomplish when we were starting out.



I would like to say that I have been blessed by something that I wasn't expecting. I have been praying earnestly that the Lord would show me my purpose here. He has been faithful in responding. I have been learning the value of humility and of prayer. Specifically the value of praying for others. I have been taking a great deal of time to identify people with needs that I can pray for and I have been so blessed by that. I have become close to the people that I work with and I envision them not as they are now, but what they would be like if God were to save them and work in their life. With that in mind, I have been eager to pray for their salvation. It would be so neat to have the Lord move this company of soldiers toward a closer relationship with Him.

I have found that the Lord is working more in my life when I stop focusing on myself and pray for others. It is an amazing thing, but I have been so blessed by this simple revelation. I often wonder how many praying servants quietly prayed for me even when I was far from God. I am thankful for their faith and for their relationship with Jesus.



Well, I will end tonight. I want to get a Medical Minute up tonight. I hope you are well and thank you so much for keeping up with me on my adventure.



God Bless,

Jeff

Little Truths...

There are simple truths in life that would always do our hearts good if we could remember them.

For example:

Babies will make you smile...

A dog's affection's are unconditional...

A good friend is hard to find...

It is always best to pray together...

And...

Jesus really does love the little children.

God Bless you and may your heart take joy in the little things.

Desert Flood

We recently had an unusual occurance. We had a desert thunderstorm that flooded our clinic and housing area. I was in Venice, Italy a few years ago and this reminds me of the famous canals, except...we are in the middle of the desert, the buildings are not ancient cathedrals, but brick walls and trailers, and the tourism is non-existent, but other than that it is just like Venice. ;0)



This is the main path to my room. I am just waiting for my gondola to arrive.

SSG Hougeson is about to head to work. Surprisingly, he must have come down with the flu because, five minutes later he called in sick. I'll be watching him.

Here is SSG French. She is our supply sergeant, but unfortunately she left the water pumps at home.

It is apparently very unusual to have this type of rain here. We are now waiting for the frogs to drop from the sky, the locust to come, and most of us are marking our doors. You never know.

Day Off...

Good Morning Everyone,

I had the day off today and so I walked around taking pictures so that you could see what is around our area.




This is a picture of the outside of my room. The left door is my room.

This is the path from the clinic to my room. The cement walls are there to protect us from mortars. The cement hallways are our bunkers to go into when we are hit with mortars.

This is the front of our clinic. It is called the Phipp's Troop Medical Clinic. It is named after a young soldier who was killed in action in I believe 2004. He was from Paris, Illinois.

This is the parking lot where we keep our ambulances.

This is our housing compound. It is surrounded by the mortar walls.

Now we enter our clinic. This is our lab. We can do CBC's, Metabolic Panels, Hemoglobins, and other basic labs. We also keep our autoclave's in here to sterile our instruments.

This is one of our exam rooms. They are more like ER suites, but it allows us to see three people in a room at once. So, much for privacy.

This is our main hallway. The door on the left is our radiology suite.

This is a soccer stadium that is right next to our gym. The significance of this field is that Saddam and one of his son's took the Iraqi soccer team to this field and slaughtered them for losing a game.

Here is the swimming pool next to the stadium, which you can see in the back ground. This was built by the Iraqi Army for their athletes. It has a ten meter platform diving board.

This is an outside shot of the Stadium. They put up blast walls for protection.


The base is one of Saddam's military air bases. We took it over and used the existing buildings as well as putting up some of our own. All and all it is not a bad place to be stationed if you have to be in this country.

I hope you all have a nice week.

Incoming...

Sorry, I had to interrupt the blog. We were just hit by a barrage of mortars. They were pretty close so we had to hit the bunkers. It gets a little ridiculous how often the enemy does this. They have reduced the numbers of attacks but they still keep trying. I am going to go out see if there is any damage to anything around us. Please say a prayer that noone was hurt.

By the way the above picture is the flak vest, helmet, and weapon, that we are suppose to wear during an attack. As you can imagine, the vest is like 35-40 lbs. and is not easy to put on, so when an attack comes in we just bolt to the bunker and unfortunately leave the vest in the room. I am no hero, I run when danger is around. ;0)

God Bless you all.

Jeff

Getting into the Routine...

Good Evening Everyone,

Before I start, I would like to say that today is Karen and My's 17th wedding anniversary. I have to be amazed at how well Karen has dealt with this crazy military life. She has travelled all over the world with me and just when we thought we would settle down in Danville, the war broke out and I have been gone from home more than I was when I was in the Active Army. So, to Karen, thank you for your love and for all of your years of devotion.

Well it seems that we have gotten into a routine. Our clinic has been turned over to us and our people have really picked up the responsibilities well. We have a little bit of a learning curve as the wireless record that we use is new to us. As a result, it is taking a little bit more time to chart on each patient. I am used to dictating my notes, but here we have to type them in to the data base which is a little more time consuming. Otherwise the days are becoming as close to normal as possible.

The type of patients that we are evaluating are very similar to what we see at home. Colds and runny noses, hernias and headaches, and lots of orthopedic injuries. The number of IED and sniper attacks have really decreased, praise the Lord, and our ambulance section is making routine runs.

We also see civilian contractors and foreign and local nationals who work here on base. It is funny but there are some cultural differences that we have to be aware of with each national that we see. We have people from Thailand, Uganda, Mexico, Europe, Asia, and people from all over the Middle East. Well, the other night I had a gentleman from Thailand, I believe, come in with a large laceration on his scalp. It was about 14cm long and bleeding quite heavily. I used some lidocaine with epi. as a local and to control bleeding. I then grabbed a surgical stapler to close his wound and when he saw that I was going to use a stapler he jumped off of the bed and started yelling, "I'm no paper, no staple, no staples." I couldn't help but laugh and when I explained to him that this is actually a very acceptable way to close a scalp laceration he looked at me as if I were some sort of quack. So, I went ahead and used some 3-0 Ethilon to sew him up. He was much happier after that.

Some of the other middle eastern cultural things are basically customs that many of you have already heard about. The left hand is considered off limits to use in public. It is offensive to wave, shake, or eat with the left hand. Dogs are considered dirty so they don't think it is appropriate to pet them. Under no circumstances does a man shake a woman's hand or even look at her. When entering a family dwelling, we are suppose to only address the man and ignore the woman as she has no role in public relations. Other more scandalous behavior like drinking, pornography, and gambling are of course strictly prohibited...(Although all three go on quite frequently, but it is as if their behavior doesn't correlate to their religious beliefs.) The people are friendly enough if you talk to them directly but they will not go out of their way to start up a discussion. So, often times a greeting will not be returned.

There are a great number of people who are working on this base from other countries. Many of them have paid large sums of money to come here and work. I think they feel that the contacts that they can make will help them to leave their impoverished homeland for a better country. One young man who works in our Mayor's Cell is from Tibet. His village collected five thousand dollars to get his name on the list so that he can come here and work. He makes 400 dollars a month and that is a lot of money for him, but it will take him a long time to pay that off. He is desperately wanting to come to America and he has made friends with some of our leadership, so hopefully he will get his chance.

Back to our clinic. We have a ping pong table in our enlistee's break room. All of the guys, wait in line to play each other. Well, the other night one of our females, Spc. Wilson, came up to play and everyone thought she would be a push over as she is petite and quite and has a rather soft nature about her. Well, she went out and proceeded to give our guys a clinic. She is a lefty so, she throws everyone off. We are all now getting together and coming up with some sort of strategy to beat her. Bryan played her the other night and when he lost he threw his paddle on the table, went to his room, and didn't come back. That just made us laugh even more. I saw him today in the office surrounded by a few guys and he was quietly offering a hefty sum to anyone who would be willing to accidentally break her left thumb. ;0) (just kidding on that last part, although I have been considering using her as our ringer when we play other units.)

Mike has got our Internet up and running, so we are all very happy about that.

We maybe having some additional duties for our medics that will require some less protected duties, so I appointed Travis as our Medical Director of our Emergency Management Section and Mike is going to take over the duties of teaching ACLS and maybe PALS. That is if it doesn't interfere with his other teaching duties at Butler. My duties as the Clinic OIC hasn't been too overwhelming at this point. I have some really good people working with me. My clinic NCOIC, who is the top enlisted guy for our troops, is SFC Kevis Lewzinsky. We just call him 'Ski'. He has set up a nice rotational schedule for the medics and has really made some effective changes to make the patient flow go much smoother. My treatment platoon leader is Lt. Doug Latino. He is a very effective organizer. He is the guy I go to when I need to have things scheduled. He arranges meetings, disseminates information, and makes sure that the other leaders are doing their jobs. The rest of the shift leaders are doing well and everyone has respect for each other. I am so happy with the cohesion that everyone is building right now. I hope it continues to grow.

In the war front, our base was attacked yesterday, again. We were mortared about 4 a.m. with a barrage. But no one was injured. I can't really go into details about some things but our military has some awesome counter attack weapons and we all feel very protected by our guys on the perimeter. God Bless all of them. I will have to say that the military surge that took place earlier in the year, did make a huge difference. I am not sure if it was the surge or if it was a change in strategy, but General Petraeus has been remarkable. He is a soldiers soldier. He is as effective as General Tommy Franks but just with a different leadership style. Both excellent leaders and it is good to know that we have had men like them to lead us.

Anyway, I am attaching some photos of our base and my room. It isn't much but it is home to me and I am thankful to have it so nice. I am not living in a foxhole and I am close to my work area. Tomorrow, I will take photos of our clinic and post them for you.

I am going to close for now as I have a sermon from Drew that Karen sent me to listen to. I had to work all day, so I was unable to go to church. I did make it down to the chapel the other day and one of the chaplains gave me a schedule and showed me around. The chapel is within walking distance. I hope you are all doing well and I will continue to pray for you all.

God Bless,

Jeff

Quick Note...

I apologize for the delay in writing. I had lost internet connection and am currenly on a server that we can only use after ten p.m. In a few days we will get full internet access without restrictions. I have a few pictures to share with you. I hope you are all well. God Bless.

First Day of Work...

Good evening everyone,

Just a quick note tonight. We started our first day today. We have several missions. Our clinic is responsible for all of the immunizations on post, so our immunization section was pounded. They will have over 4000 flu vaccines to give this fall as well as the other immunizations. We also have the responsibility to evaluate all soldiers who are redeploying back home. We have to identify any medical issues that each soldier may have so that care can be coordinated with the medical facilities back in the States. In the clinic itself, we take care of soldiers, contractors, Iraqi Nationals, and foreign service workers. As you can imagine, we stay busy. Today we saw 110 patients on the first shift alone. So, I was a little taken back by the large amount responsibilities that this clinic has and I have been spending a great deal of time trying to get my hands around it all.

I am blessed to be surrounded by people who are very sharp. I am in charge of this facility, but honestly, it is by title only as Mike, Travis, and Bryan are really the co-leaders. I try to adopt the Ronald Reagan strategy of leadership which is to surround myself with people much smarter than myself. I am sure that I would be overwhelmed if not for their help.

I really want to share with everyone that our military is doing so much more here than just fighting a war. They are rebuilding a country. Now, the news doesn't cover this but the truth is that the military is here providing medical care, building schools, providing jobs and trying to truly win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. I am proud to be a part of an organization like the Army. They really do get up every morning to make this world a safer place to live.
I am completely in awe of the enormity of this effort. We are individually, such a small part, but all of these small parts make up one incredible protective force.

I will have some time tomorrow to clean up this blog a little bit. I will add some pictures and give you some more information on the customs and cultural mores of the Iraqi people. It is very interesting.

I would like to ask you to pray for the Christians in Mosul, which is a city north of us. Islamic extremist have taken over the city and are killing Christians. They are forcing the Christians to convert to Islam or they will kill them. So, we are having refugees who are fleeing. I will provide an article here tomorrow.

I want you guys to know that I am praying for you and thank you for keeping up with me. It is good to know that people back home are just an email away.

Love you all,


Jeff

Safely Arrived in Iraq

Well, we have finally arrived to our final destination. We left Camp Buerhing, Kuwait at 0330 on Friday and made it to Camp Ali Al Salam about an hour and a half later. We were suppose to catch a C-17 jet out of the country at 0845, but we were delayed for 16 hours. We finally made it to our plane and found that we were on a C-130, which is a propeller plane. It was an extremely tight fit but we made it into Balad, Iraq about 3 hours later.

We arrived to our sleeping quarters and were pleasantly surprised to find that the unit, that we are replacing, had already moved out of the rooms and they were available for us to move into. We have the enlisted in three man rooms, and the officers are in single rooms. It is like being in a college dorm again. I will put a picture of my room up for you to view.

The clinic appears to be well equipped for what we do. I will meet my counterpart tomorrow, his name is Major Jarvis. He is the current OIC and I will be assuming his duties as soon as our transition is complete. We could all sense the relief of the unit that we are replacing. They have been here for 15 months and they are eager to get home to their families.

The weather here in Balad is a little cooler than Kuwait, but it is still very hot. Dust and sand is everywhere. I was cleaning my room and it seemed that as soon as I wiped the grime off of the furniture it was immediately replaced with a fresh pile of dust. But I felt better making the effort.

I checked out the chapel services here and found that there are 5 protestant services on Sunday. So, that will make it much more convenient for us to get to church. Our clinic is open 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, so we often times have a difficult time trying to get to church if only one service is offered.

I am very excited about getting started. I have prayed, so much, for God to use this year as a ministering opportunity and I am praying that the Lord gives me the wisdom and courage to be an effective Witness for Him. I found it a little ironic last night as we arrived into country. As soon as we arrived at the airport, we were ushered off of the plane and into a room where we were given a couple of briefings. The first briefing covered safety and security. We are at a base that is frequently attacked with mortars and random gunfire, so very specific instructions were given as to what we should do, during an attack. The second briefing covered the do's and don'ts of living in Iraq. The first don't was the prohibition of distributing religious material. We are prohibited from discussing our faith, passing out pamphlets, or engaging in any religious activity away from the base. Any and all religious activities have to be confined to the Post Chapels. Now, these rules are in place more for our safety than anything and they are good rules, but I found it strange that I had just been praying for Witnessing opportunities when I was on the plane and one of the first briefings we have is about how it is prohibited to discuss our faith.

Well, I will close the blog for now as I still have some unpacking to do and will have to get prepared for tomorrow. I will post more regularly from here on out, assuming we can maintain adequate internet service.

I want you to know that I am praying for all of you and I hope that the Lord blesses you with a desire to serve Him.

God Bless,

Jeff

Into Kuwait...

Good Morning Everyone,

Well we made it into Kuwait at 2:30 a.m. our time. It took two days to get here. We flew from Seattle to Bangor, Maine then to Lipzig, (Sp?) Germany and then onto Kuwait City. The flight was chartered and went very well. We are currently scheduled to leave here for Iraq on the 12th of October. We are currently living in a large tent and are in pretty close quarters. The food here is great and we all have to worry that we don't go home weighing more than when we left. The tent that we are staying in is air conditioned and for that we are thankful. The temperature here can turn a person into a nocturnal creature as the night is when the weather is tolerable. The soldiers are in great spirits and ready to get our mission started. I am so proud of all of them as they have gone through some pretty difficult training and have not complained in the least.

While we are here we will be getting briefings on the culture, customs, and courtesies, of the Iraqi people. We will also fire our weapons to ensure that they are functioning well and then we will have other misc. training. I would like to have a few of our guys go to a refresher course for CLS (Combat Life Saver) as I think our ambulance platoon medics still need some training. All of the medics are EMT certified but most of them do not perform these duties in the civilian world. I and the other providers conducted some training for them during the mass casualty exercise, but we will need to do more.

It will be interesting to be in this part of the world during our presidential election. We are all wondering what kind of changes, if any, that we will see, post-election. I pray that the people pick wisely. I pray that the Lord will bless us with a person who represents our Christian Values. I'll let you decide which candidate qualifies for that prerequisite.

I want to thank you all again for your prayers.

I would like to close this post with just two words of encouragement, "GO CUBS"!!!