PENSEES

I’ve arrived back in Hawaii and am on the eve of my deployment to Iraq.  Sometime next week I will leave Hawaii on a plane headed for Kuwait International Airport.  From there I will travel up to my new ‘home’ in Iraq.  I don’t really know what to expect over the next seven months.  I am not looking forward to certain things like: no time off, missing spending thanksgiving and Christmas with my family, the stress of combat, and the fear of having some of my Marines injured, or worse.    But I am also looking forward to parts of the deployment.  Few people, even among military personnel, get to spend time in a combat zone.  I am looking forward to living in a different country for seven months.  I am looking forward to brining just a few quality books and reading and really learning from them.  I look forward to opportunities to train the Iraqi Army in communications techniques.  I’m also looking forward to the ways in which my faith with grow during this time.  I’ve always found that my daily Christian life is strongest when I’m away from many of modern distractions and am being challenged.  By God’s grace I will grow in ways I wouldn’t if I wasn’t deploying to Iraq.  

I have several goals for this deployment and I will probably share all of them at some point, but one of them is to send out regular emails sharing my (unclassified) experiences.  I will add most everyone I know to the email list but feel free to be removed if you don’t want the emails.  I will also be taking my digital camera recording much of what I see with pictures.