First a little about what has been happening in th last couple weeks:  

I cannot believe that we are right at the 6 month mark of our deployment!  Since the weather has started warming up, my assistant and I have been able to focus more on traveling to visit our Soldiers in other areas.  Previously we had been grouped the other bases into clusters.  This meant that we would spend multiple days jumping from FOB to FOB.  Instead of that model, we are trying to do shorter trips more often.  A week ago, we were able to visit three different locations.   

One of the FOBS we made it to was by an accident.  It is my opinion that the person who was supposed to schedule our  
flight fogot about us until the last minute.  So they scheduled us to fly to another FOB in hopes that we could find another way to our destination.  I was tired and not very happy but as we walked to the DFAC that evening i was able to take the picture to the right.  I had to decrease the resolution and quality of the picture because of the slow internet speed, but it was a beautiful scene. 

The next morning we woke up early and flew back home because there were no flights to our final destination where I had a scheduled for a service the next day.  We arrived at home around 0800 via fixed wing flight.  We took all our gear and range walked (walked fast) down to the Helo terminal to see if there was any chance that we might jump on a helicopter to get us where we needed to go.  I walked in and it turned out that there were two chinooks that were getting ready to depart to our destination to pick up some Soldiers who were getting ready to redeploy.  We arrived without incident and immediately went to the chapel to begin our preperations for the service. 

       In celebration of Easter, we ran, and ran, and ran some more.  Ther was a 5 mile, "run for Jesus" that was put on by one of the other Chaplains, and then a couple days later there was a satallite boston marathon here.  The boston marathon began at 0300 and since my travels didnt allow me to properly train I decided it best to work one of the water stations.  After the marathon was the muleskinner challange which was a 100 mile relay event.  Each team could only have a max of seven persons on a team (i think), and you could only have one runner per team at a time.  Run, run, and more run!

2nd a little about our Troops:
The warmer season is also bring more coflict.  The Soldiers in our brigade always amaze me as I see how strong, mentally and physically they are.  One of these Soldiers whom I consider to be one of the strongest and toughest Soldiers we have came up to me the other day with a worried look on his face.  I knew something was wrong, and honestly, I starteld me a little bit.  We made out typical plesantries, and I finally just asked him what was wrong.  He reached for his neck and pulled out a celtic cross that i have given him a few days before.  "I broke the cross," he said as he pulled up on his ID tag Necklace.  Dangling on the end of the neckalce was a cross that had one of the sides of it broken off.  The Soldier nervously said, "I heard that its really bad luck when this happens."  This Soldier goes outside the wire very often and you could see the hurt on his face as he thought about bringing bad luck down on himself and the Soldiers with him.  I went to my office and grabbed another one traded with him but just trading didnt seem to releave his fears.  "I am glad that you wear this thing enough to wear it out," I told him.  He seemed to accept this and he nodded his head.  We then talked about how lucky we are that God is more than just crosses that can be broke, or books that can get torn up. 

For those praying for us:  1st safety, and secondly for me.  I need clarity and wisdom as I work to keep our Soldiers engaded and thier heads in the game as we move past our halfway point.