Welcome Home

This week Ft. Campbell is hosting a semi-annual celebration called the Week of the Eagles. We have already had opening activities including a couple concerts, an airshow, and a special event that took place this afternoon.

When 101st Soldiers come home from deployment there are all kinds of briefings that they go through, but one of the moments that is most special is the welcome home.

The post will try to let family know when their Soldier's plane is landing at the airfield. That way the family can be there. But the post buts on a large ceremony of welcoming for the Soldiers. It is something that many Soldiers of the past did not receive. This is especially true for many of our Vietnam and Korean war vets.

Well, some of the folks around Fort Campbell decided to try to change that. They worked with the leadership of the post and the 101st Division and put on a "Welcome Home" ceremony for previous vets, especially those from the Vietnam war. They thought that some of the vets might welcome the idea of having a special ceremony just for them. What was a little bit of a surprise was the number of people who were willing to travel in order to be a part of the celebration.

What started as a plan for "A" welcome home became 3 different welcome home ceremonies because they could not fit all of the vets into one celebration in the hanger. Yes, you read that correctly. They had so many vets respond that they could not fit them all into an airplane hanger. They had to break them into 3 different groups. I am proud to say that no one was turned away.

I expected to see emotion in the faces of the vets, but the emotions of their family members in the stands was even greater. These people represented entire families who had struggled for 40 or so years with some of the pain of how they were treated, and it seemed as though a good amount of healing was accomplished.

It was an awe-inspiring moment, and we were glad to have been a part of it, and very proud of our post, leadership, and the community to bring it all together.

Endorsement Conference

We have just returned from our endorsement conference with the ECA.

The conference was in Branson, MO and included some excellent speakers. One of our favorites was Dr. Norm Geisler. Dr. Geisler has written a number of books (I think they said 70) concerning the foundations of Christianity. His presentation addressed a number of current issues facing America as well as the church.

Another excellent opportunity though was to hear from other ECA chaplains. The ECA has 113 active duty chaplains and during a luncheon meeting we were able to hear from some of them who were in attendance. It was especially nice to hear some suggestions from some of the spouses.

This was our first time to Branson, MO and we did not really have a lot of time to try to catch any shows, and did not really want to pay for any of them either. I guess the one suggestion I would make is to understand that traffic in town moves really slow. When we tried to leave to come home it took us 20 minutes to go about 5 miles to the interstate.

Just a heads-up in case you are thinking of visiting.

Blessings

Busy Month

I have wanted to update this blog much more often than this, however, we have been very busy.

The first week of the month was spent at the North American Christian Convention. The training was excellent. I especially appreciated the training on understanding the next generation. Those who are 18-25 are many of the Soldiers to whom I am trying to minister. I know that they view the world slightly different than I do, so this was some really good material.

After that we had a couple weeks of "block leave." This is when almost everyone in the brigade is given the opportunity to take leave with their family. We decided to take a week and go somewhere that was new for us. We went to Disney World! We had a lot of fun and were actually thankful for the rain. It really helped to keep things cool. We also discovered the pin-traded practice. Essentially, most of the employees have Disney pins that they wear and they are required to trade them with you if you ask. We really enjoyed putting together a set by work with the folks at Disney.

Then we returned and I ended up covering for a lot of the other chaplains who were on block leave. The good thing is that I got to do some stuff that I would not normally do, meet some new Soldiers, and spent some time with two of my other brigade chaplains. Busy, but good stuff.

My youngest son is at camp and is having a blast. He got to celebrate his birthday there and the staff took the entire cabin out to Dairy Queen. I'm sure they were very thankful for him at that point.

I also met my new chaplain's assistant and he is a great guy, with a lot of experience. Hopefully he'll be able to keep me from getting into too much trouble.

Finally, we will be doing some additional traveling for some training with my endorser. This should also be some very good training. One of the speakers is Dr. Norm Geisler. So I am very interested in this opportunity.

The Army has announced some of the upcoming deployments and I have some friends in that brigade. Please keep our Soldiers, leaders, and world events in your prayers.