Well, today is our last day here at Ft. Lewis. Tomorrow we will load up on a chartered plane and fly to Bangor, Maine then to Germany and then to Kuwait where we will stay for ten more days of training and acclimation. I maybe out of the electronic world for those ten days but when I get up and running at Balad, I will update the blog.
We had a visit from General Harris today. He stopped in to wish us well. Mostly pomp and ceremony so for me a complete waste of time. Our soldiers are in good spirits and ready to get started. Training was getting redundant and the anticipation was building, so most guys were eager for this day to come.
I would like to welcome Cpt. Roscoe's PA students from Butler University. He has linked us to his blog and so to all of you Bull Dogs...Welcome! By the way, I have quite a bit of dirt on your professor, so if anyone needs a better grade, get with me and I will tell you things that should make the rest of your semester smooth sailing.
I talked to Karen and Karis tonight. I will have one more opportunity to call them before we leave the country. Karis has been a trooper through all of this and Karen has been doing a great job keeping her busy so that she doesn't dwell on the fact that daddy is gone for a while. I would like to ask everyone to pray for Karen as she does the single mom duties for the next year. As many of you know, Karen is a hard working, Type A, personality so I have complete confidence in her abilities and am grateful to have a wife who is as gifted as she is. I would ask, however, that you pray that Christ watches over my family.
I will make this blog short tonight as it is getting late and we have to get up early to head to the airport. Washington State has been a beautiful place for us over the last five weeks and I am so glad that we mobilized out of Ft. Lewis. Of course, I still have a hard time understanding why the Army flew us from Camp Atterbury, Indiana, which is a mobilization site, to the west coast, train us up and then fly us all the way back across the country to fly to the Middle East. But that is your tax dollars hard at work.
I want you all to know that I am thankful to you for checking in and for your prayers. I pray that Christ is the Lord of your life and that you are abiding in His will.
God Bless and I will write more in 10 days.
Jeff
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Last Day of Pass, Then We Go...
Good Evening Everyone,
Just a quick update. We have just concluded a long weekend pass and will be finishing up our final preparations before we ship. Our departure date has been moved up from 2 October to 1 October. I think the unit is ready to go and get this mission started.
We had a long weekend pass over the last few days. Many of our soldiers families flew in for a visit. Karen and I decided not to have her and Karis fly in for a visit. We had a hard enough time saying good by when we left Atterbury and so we didn't want to have to go through that again.
It was nice to be able to have a few days to relax before we go. Washington State is beautiful. I have vacationed in this area in the past but each time I visit the Pacific Northwest, I am even more amazed at Our Lord's sense of style. I took a couple of guys to Mt. Rainier today, where we spent the afternoon hiking and laughing. The weather was perfect and the mountain was calm. I will attach a few pictures of our visit. Yesterday, we went to Seattle and explored the city. We visited the very first Starbucks which was like a trip to the holy land for some of the guys. We walked the wharf and then went up in the Space Needle. The city is really growing. There has been so much new construction since Karen and I visited here in 2005. I am not sure why so many people move out here as the prices for everything is almost prohibitive, but people keep coming. I can see the appeal of the Pacific Northwest however, as the scenery is magnificent. The land is covered in green and the Forest are full of wildlife. The air is crisp and clean and the weather has been great. We have been very pleased with the weather as we did not have one day of training interrupted by rain.
As I drove through the wooded area at the base of Mt. Rainier, I couldn't help but be uplifted by God's awesome power to create. As the Jews were leaving Egypt, the Lord provided them with Manna from the sky. Today, I thought about that and realized that God is still providing us with our needs. The logging companies were out today harvesting and then replanting trees so that we could have furniture, and homes, and paper. The apple orchards that we passed were emptied and standing ready for next seasons growth. This seasons fruit had been plucked and shipped to our tables, and the dam that held back the melting ice water from the mountain was converting hydro power into electricity. God is still supplying our needs and for some silly reason, I was completely amazed at his grace and kindness to us.
A couple of days ago, I called home and Karen was telling me how she ran into a mother who has three children and all of them play a musical instrument. She proceeded to tell Karen that each child plays three different instruments and that they each practice each instrument for an hour each night. Well, as many of you know, Karis plays violin and piano, so when she heard Karen tell the lady that it might be a good idea if Karis played each of her instruments for an hour each night, Karis nearly went into a panic. She called me and asked me if I could talk to mommy and tell her to stop talking to these crazy ladies. :o) I guess Karis has other plans for her time. She generally practices her instruments for as long as it takes for her to go through her assigned songs twice. So, as you can imagine she can play any Mozart piece in 2 minutes flat. Sometimes being a parent makes me laugh out loud.
Well, I will close this letter for now with a final note. We will be leaving here in a couple of days and we will be in Kuwait for up to ten days. I am not sure if the officer quarters or if the unit that we will be staying with will have Internet access, so I maybe out of touch for ten days or so. But when we arrive at Anaconda, we will have access, so I will update this blog then. Until then, I pray that God will bless you with a repentant heart and a peaceful Spirit.
Just a quick update. We have just concluded a long weekend pass and will be finishing up our final preparations before we ship. Our departure date has been moved up from 2 October to 1 October. I think the unit is ready to go and get this mission started.
We had a long weekend pass over the last few days. Many of our soldiers families flew in for a visit. Karen and I decided not to have her and Karis fly in for a visit. We had a hard enough time saying good by when we left Atterbury and so we didn't want to have to go through that again.
It was nice to be able to have a few days to relax before we go. Washington State is beautiful. I have vacationed in this area in the past but each time I visit the Pacific Northwest, I am even more amazed at Our Lord's sense of style. I took a couple of guys to Mt. Rainier today, where we spent the afternoon hiking and laughing. The weather was perfect and the mountain was calm. I will attach a few pictures of our visit. Yesterday, we went to Seattle and explored the city. We visited the very first Starbucks which was like a trip to the holy land for some of the guys. We walked the wharf and then went up in the Space Needle. The city is really growing. There has been so much new construction since Karen and I visited here in 2005. I am not sure why so many people move out here as the prices for everything is almost prohibitive, but people keep coming. I can see the appeal of the Pacific Northwest however, as the scenery is magnificent. The land is covered in green and the Forest are full of wildlife. The air is crisp and clean and the weather has been great. We have been very pleased with the weather as we did not have one day of training interrupted by rain.
As I drove through the wooded area at the base of Mt. Rainier, I couldn't help but be uplifted by God's awesome power to create. As the Jews were leaving Egypt, the Lord provided them with Manna from the sky. Today, I thought about that and realized that God is still providing us with our needs. The logging companies were out today harvesting and then replanting trees so that we could have furniture, and homes, and paper. The apple orchards that we passed were emptied and standing ready for next seasons growth. This seasons fruit had been plucked and shipped to our tables, and the dam that held back the melting ice water from the mountain was converting hydro power into electricity. God is still supplying our needs and for some silly reason, I was completely amazed at his grace and kindness to us.
A couple of days ago, I called home and Karen was telling me how she ran into a mother who has three children and all of them play a musical instrument. She proceeded to tell Karen that each child plays three different instruments and that they each practice each instrument for an hour each night. Well, as many of you know, Karis plays violin and piano, so when she heard Karen tell the lady that it might be a good idea if Karis played each of her instruments for an hour each night, Karis nearly went into a panic. She called me and asked me if I could talk to mommy and tell her to stop talking to these crazy ladies. :o) I guess Karis has other plans for her time. She generally practices her instruments for as long as it takes for her to go through her assigned songs twice. So, as you can imagine she can play any Mozart piece in 2 minutes flat. Sometimes being a parent makes me laugh out loud.
Well, I will close this letter for now with a final note. We will be leaving here in a couple of days and we will be in Kuwait for up to ten days. I am not sure if the officer quarters or if the unit that we will be staying with will have Internet access, so I maybe out of touch for ten days or so. But when we arrive at Anaconda, we will have access, so I will update this blog then. Until then, I pray that God will bless you with a repentant heart and a peaceful Spirit.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Training Completed
This is me getting ready to do a patrol exercise.Good Evening,
I have decided to start a blog so that I could update you all as I move forward in my mobilization to Iraq. As many of you know, I have been activated numerous times since 9-11 and each time is no easier then the previous. But through it all, you have been generous with your prayers and support. I am so thankful to you all for taking care of my family when I am gone. I have had so many people who offered their assistance to Karen and Karis that I can't keep track of the kindness. So, I would like to start this first entry by thanking our friends for your thoughtful offerings.
I am attached to the 215th ASMC which is a medical company. We are being sent to Camp Anaconda, located in Balad, Iraq. We are a medical and ambulance company and we will be taking over a clinic. Our mission is to provide care for soldiers and contractors who are stationed at Anaconda. Some of our medics maybe tasked out to support other units as they go outside the wire for missions. At this point, we are not sure about the specifics. I have been given the opportunity to be the Officer in Charge of this medical mission, but I have wonderful support. We have 4 PA's, 1 RN, 60+ medics, and a support platoon of mechanics, cooks, and supply personnel.
We are so blessed to have some of the finest medical officers the Army has to offer. The first PA is Captain Mike Roscoe. He is a Professor at Butler University and works as an Emergency Room PA in his off hours. He is getting ready to be promoted to the rank of Major and so he will be sharing the OIC duties as we get this mission started. He is also finishing up his disertation and is hoping to complete his PhD. soon. The second PA is Lieutenant Bryan McFarland. He works in Evansville, Indiana as an orthopedic PA. He is in a practice that focuses on surgery of the upper extremities. He is also due to be promoted to the rank of Captain. He was, at one time, in the Navy, but we don't hold that against him and love him as if he were our own. Finally, we have Lieutenant Travis Welch. Travis is an orthopedic PA and works in Indianapolis. He came up through the enlisted ranks, where he served as a combat medic for the 101st Airborne Division.
Both Lt. Welch and Cpt. Roscoe have had a previous deployment to Afghanistan so they bring a wealth of knowledge to this deployment.
In addition to the PA's, we have Lieutenant Tim Nott who is our Registered Nurse for this trip. He will actually be in charge of making sure that the medics are doing what they are supposed to be doing. He will take care of making out their assignments and will serve as a our mass casualty triage nurse. He is an emergency medicine nurse and he fits right in with the rest of us misfits.
We mobilized in August and was sent here to Ft. Lewis, Washington for training. Our soldiers were trained up on their basic soldiering task to include qualifying with their weapons, practicing convoy security, identifying and reacting to IED's, and base security. Finally, towards the end of the month we went through medical training which concluded with a mass casualty exercise. I will post some pictures or our training this month in a day or two. We have now finished our training requirements and so we are going to have a 4 days pass before we ship out. Our ship date out of the country is 2 October. We are eager to get started.
I am exited about this deployment as I know that we will be used to help soldiers complete their missions. On the other hand, we all dread leaving our families and loved ones behind. I honestly, think that it is harder on them than it is us. Again, I am so thankful that Karen and Karis have friends that will share this year with them.
I would like to conclude this blog by saying that, I believe that the Lord puts us in places where he knows we can serve. I look at this year as just another opportunity to serve Christ. It is my prayer that Christ will be glorified through this deployment.
Well, I pray that you are all well and I look forward to any feed back that you would like to provide. I will keep you all on my prayer list and I would ask that you do the same for my family and me.
Please check back often as I will update this post every few days.
Jeff
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