October 25th

Well, I am figuring that we are somewhere under 100 days to go on this deployment! Please do not accept that as gospel (or authoritative) - I am not writing this on behalf of the command, nor do I know the exact day of our departure. You may accept it as gospel (in the sense that it is good news!) - which is what the biblical word means - as, 100 days - give or take a few, is doable I think.

I understand from other Paratroopers, and from Facebook, and from my wife (who gets right to the point from time to time), that 100 days doesn't necessarily feel like good news right now. I definitely get it. With eight + months down - everyone seems to be feeling the cumulative weight of separation. For all of you who follow this blog from home (FT Rich) - know that we feel it too. Still, Jamie reminds me that it is more intense on your end. We leave, and life becomes entirely different. The sites, sounds, certainly smells, everything - for a year of our lives, have changed. Sometimes, in the course of things here, I find that it is very difficult to spend much time thinking about home. As I have explained it to Jamie before, it is just too hard trying to live in two places at the same time - emotionally then, I begin to disconnect in some ways. I certainly care deeply about what is happening back home and am anxious to hear about it, but my living has to be done here, in the company of soldiers.

I understand that for a soldier's wife it just is not that way. A soldier leaves, and the family just goes on - with much the same routine . . . minus one. Many of the things that were done as a family are still done, and the absence of the one is keenly felt. That must be very hard.

Then, 0f course, there are the typical hard things - like a house full of sick kids! As I am writing tonight, my wife and both kids are sick - all together; and I am asking the Lord for a fast healing for at least one of them! Last time this happened our son recovered first, as I recall, and was summarily called upon to heat soup, refill glasses of Gatorade, and generally become a servant. At the end of the day, my wife and I were glad for the experience on his behalf, and proud of the way that he rose to the occasion. Perhaps this time the result will be again to the development of a Christ-like spirit. Of course, I am getting of track - and the point was, that this is an especially difficult time - chiefly at home.

Encourage one another at least with this thought - no Airman, now arriving in Afghanistan, will complete his tour before Task Force Denali returns home! It took us a long time to arrive at this point - but we are finally there! I probably should not so often give voice or text to my Air Force envy - surely the scriptures address such a poor spirit but sometimes I just can't help it. I spent three years in Panama - most of it in the jungle - while my Air Force neighbor was home by four-thirty every work day (of which I think there were relatively few!) :-) Too often I came home filthy, frustrated, exhausted to Jamie's first words of greeting - why didn't you join the Air Force?

At any rate - we are not too far off now! Many of us will have been home a month before the Iditarod gets started. That is worth celebrating. Truly, that is good news.

Below (or above - now sure how this thing will format) - you will find some pictures from Sunday Service (today's) with the guys from B Troop. Perhaps you will see someone you recognize! If you don't - and you were supposed to (like - if the soldier you're looking for is in B Troop) please tell him to go to church! It is good for him! - and that his chaplain, but most especially his God - loves him!

Alright - enough for tonight, I suppose.

Grace and peace to you all, from our Lord Jesus -

chaplain matthew

Note - Can't get the Images to upload correctly right now - will try again later, I promise.

Hello Again . . . finally

I am sure some of you have been wondering whether or not I would ever return to this blog. There were times when I wondered myself. A series of discouraging episodes with the internet kind of sucked the life out of me for a while - but I have been on Environmental Morale Leave and am mostly better now.

My intent will be to renew the postings here at least every other week for the remainder of the deployment - but I guess we will see how it goes. I have intended lots of things over the years.



We left August in pretty good spirits, I think - all things considered. While a couple of other Battalions in our Brigade took some pretty hard hits, and not a few casualties - we were very glad to have a few injuries but no lost soldiers during the violent days surrounding the Afghan elections. Not to say that our Denali paratroopers were removed from the fight - in many places they were right in the thick. Sometimes there is just no accounting (on this end of eternity, I suppose) for the way a battle turns. We have been very sorry though, to hear of the loss of several of our Brigade brothers during that same period.



I took leave at the end of September, as I have indicated. It was super to be with Jamie and the kids for a few days - really nice. Went fishing with a dear friend who is also an Army chaplain, and the District Superintendent for the Church of the Nazarene in Alaska. He is an incredible man, who is quite possibly the most down to earth Senior Church leader that I have ever met. Not that those are rare, I doubt that they are - he is just strikingly real and sincere in faith. I cannot imagine a better Superintendent (and he does not read this blog - so that cannot be misconstrued as flattery).



Gets me to thinking about myself when I am around folks like that - and how I want much more to be transparent, and at the same time more faithful. Those who know me well know how inadequate I have often felt as any sort of Christian leader. (Please do NOT respond to this with comments to the contrary - that is not my purpose!!! - just an attempt at greater transparency.) I think too, that I have wasted much time in wishing to be much more than I am - on some grander scale - and failing to be consistent in smaller things. Things like, routine - daily time with God in prayer and the scriptures, daily prayer with my family (when I am home). I suppose if I could name just two things that are so needful for me - those are the two.



I was looking at some old pictures with my dad the other morning (before catching a flight out of Dallas) - one was the living room of his family home in Laredo, Texas. His father and mother spent more than thirty years in one Salvation Army Corps in Laredo - how common is that these days? Anyway, he told me that his family spent most every morning in prayer together in that living room. How simple, and what a profound influence that must have had on the whole family.



Lord, shape that kind of consistency into my life - for the sake of my wife and children, for my own, and especially that You would be pleased and glorified in me. Shape us around the little consistencies that add up to a grand life with You.



Sorry this is short - but I will be told any moment now, "computer 17, your time is up."



matthew