Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Thanks for Remembering...

Good Evening Everyone,

I want to let everyone know how much I appreciate your cards and letters of support. It is a rare day that I don't receive a Christmas card or a letter of encouragement from you. In fact, I receive letters and cards from people that I have never met. My mother-in-laws church has really showed great support. I get a letter almost daily from the Central Christian Church in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. It is amazing how nice it is to receive a letter in this environment. As you can imagine we are really isolated here, so letters from home are really appreciated.

I also want to thank my friends that I have here. The providers that I work with have really been a great source of joy for me. I am blessed to have peers who look out for me and who have ensured that I am successful in my job. The truth is that Mike, Travis, Bryan, Jose, Rod, Andy, and Dave are all much brighter and much more capable men then myself and yet they have taken the role of providing me wise counsel from behind the scenes. I am so honored to have them here and in my life. They provide me the comradarie that is well known among soldiers. I can't imagine what this tour would have been like if I hadn't had these guys here with me. Tim, our nurse and our clinical director has been an awesome right hand man. He has kept the clinic running smoothly and provides much needed guidance for our medics. He is constantly in the training mode and is on a mission to improve the clinical skills of each of our medics.

As a former nurse, I can tell you that nurses are so under appreciated and are often times silent servers. Some of the people that I admire the most are nurses and my life has been greatly and positively affected by a few nurses who I have been blessed to have had a relationship.

Our medics are awesome. We see 2500 patients a month in our clinic and our vaccination clinic has been vaccinating over 3000 soldiers and civilians a month. Our ambulance section is making hundreds of runs a month and has been responsible for most of the medical transport on our entire base.

I want to share with you all that we are in a very secure area and are extremely blessed to have some semblance of safety. Three years ago this base was a dangerous place to be. They were mortared daily and the road side bombs were a daily event. Now we may have 3-4 mortar attacks a week and few roadside bombs a week.

The Army has a relatively new vehicle called and MRAP. It is a heavily armored transport vehicle that is designed to divert the roadside bomb's blast away from the vehicle. A few weeks ago I had four soldiers who had been hit by a roadside bomb and they were in an MRAP. They all walked away. They were banged up but we were able to manage their care in our clinic. Had they been in a Humvee, they would most certainly have perished.

Well, I will close this post by saying that you are all in my prayers. I hope you will all have a great Christmas holiday and that the Lord sees you safely through as you travel to see your families. God is good and His love is unconditional.

I hope you are all well,

God Bless

Jeff

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