Last Few Weeks

27 July (Tues)

Today is a great day because it marks one of the significant milestones of this deployment: My replacement arrives today!!! His Unit has been slowly trickling in over the past week, and his plane gets here this afternoon. It will be hard to wipe this silly grin off of my face for awhile. Although there is one thing that will dampen my excitement and you can see it for yourself in the attached pictures. We all will have to move over to the other side of this base and into what they call the transient tents. Many of our soldiers are already there, as you can see. The picture of the big empty circus tent with almost 500 beds in it (bunk-bed style) is where we will be. If you look closely in the back of the tent you can see my friend, Stephen, waving at me while I took the picture. It has been very hot over here this past week (almost 110 degrees), and they say the air conditioning in those tents is not great. Many of our soldiers are already grumbling, but hey, what can you do? And besides, it's only for a short while! You can tolerate just about anything if you know it is temporary. ("Embrace the Suck!" as they say in the Army).

The other picture is of the poster I made for my Chaplain Fun Run last Friday. I organized a run around the base (a total of 8 miles) for our Unit and had 8 soldiers come out and join me. It was the 2nd time I made it all the way around this place, which is a significant achievement for me. I have been active in my PT so far and my weight has dropped steadily because of it. I am down to a weight that I have not seen since college! I hope I can keep it off when I get home. It's easy to get into a routine with exercise here because it is expected of you and the facilities to go work out or run on a treadmill are easily accessible. That will not be the case when I get home unfortunately, so it will take more effort to stay consistent.

Anyway, I packed up and moved out of my room yesterday. It was kind of a weird feeling seeing it all empty (except for a few items I am leaving behind for the new Chaplain). He will go right into my room today and I will move out either to the tents or maybe sleep on a cot in a friend's room for awhile. The problem with moving to the transient tents is that it is hard to get back over here to the office every morning for the daily meetings and to train my new counterpart. So I may be in limbo for the first week before I commit to the other side of town. We'll see how it goes. But I did send home two large trunks and several smaller boxes full of my stuff already. It was good to lighten the load (but not cheap on the postage!). Leaving the room for the last time was a weird feeling because it had been my "home" for most of the last year. I am glad to leave it, don't get me wrong, but it was just a strange feeling nonetheless. So please keep me in your prayers trough this transition. Relationships here are strained. We're tired and people are stressed out... myself included at times. So please pray for God's guidance, safety, and grace. Thank you.