Thanks Mom and Dad

1 March 09

My parents celebrated 45 years of marriage yesterday. Thanks mom and dad for your example, and your devotion to one another and to God. Your sons both appreciate and love you.

As for life here in South Carolina.... it's raining hard again today. There is a winter storm warning for tonight and tomorrow morning. They expect snow to hit tonight in much of the Carolinas and up the eastern coast. My brother in Boston will probably get pounded in a day or so. But as for us, we're all acting like school kids who sit around the radio hoping to hear if their school district is closed due to snow. But in our case, we're all wondering if Monday morning PT will be cancelled! If so, the staff will let us know later tonight.

Weather permitting, Doug and I will go off post and visit a local southern bapstist church again this morning. It's a local mega-church called "Shandon Baptist Church" that's located within a mile of Ft. Jackson. It's a big, beautiful brick structure with a sanctuary very similar to the very large Southern Baptist church where my wife and I used to worship. We went to the contemporary service last week and thoroughly enjoyed it. Good music and a good message.

I forgot to mention a few weeks back that one of the unique aspects of worshipping on an Army training post with basic training Soldiers is that they are commanded to take their weapon with them everywhere they go... including church. So it was interesting to see a hundred young Soldiers file into a chapel with M-16 rifles in hand. No one has any bullets, and each rifle has a muzzle guard (a locking device of some kind on the end), so there was never any concern that a gun might go off accidentally. But it was still kind of weird. I suppose this is one of the only places in America where you don't fear when bus loads of Soldiers show up at your church with guns! They're here to worship the Lord (weapons allowed!).

Well, I've completed 2 months now. Only one month to go. The upcoming week will be very important. It's already been dubbed the "death week" because our focus will be on honoring the dead this week. They are teaching us that Chaplains have three basic job functions: Nurture the Living, Care for the Wounded, and Honor the Dead. This week we concentrate on the last aspect by working on Ramp Ceremonies again (when a casket is carried onto or off of an airplane), Funerals and Memorial Ceremonies, and followed up with a trip to the local morgue. They need to expose us all to the grim reality of death in this job, and that each of us may be called upon to give a final salute to a Soldier killed in battle.