Up To Speed

For the past 6 months or so I have not been writing much (if at all) and I thought it would be a good idea to bring what readers I have left up to speed as to where I have been and what I have been doing. Iwould love to report that I have been actively engaged with some super secret agency working to thwart the schemes of our nations enemies or that I have been engaged in a prototype program for putting a chaplain on the moon. However, my absence has been far less exciting. I have for the past six months (begin drumroll here) been attending the US Army's Chaplain Captain Career Course (cymbal crash) affectionately known as C4. That means that I have been holed up with about 35 other chaplains studying chaplain stuff; preaching, mentoring, supervising, etc, etc. The idea bhind the course is to prepare senior captain chaplains to take on the added responsibilities inherent in serving as a brigade chaplain. The brigade chaplain, as opposed to the battalion chaplain, serves as the technical supervisor for 2 to 6 battalion chaplains. It's a challenge I look forward to taking on in the near future.

Early in the C4 process my classmates and I received word of our follow-on assignements. Some are going to Ft. Drum in New York; so to Ft. Bragg North Carolina, the center of the Airborne universe; Others to serve as recruiters for new chaplains. Me? My family? We are headed to (begin 2nd drumroll here) Anchorage Alaska (cymbal crash). I'm going to Ft. Richardson to serve in the 725 BSB which is part of the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division. And frankly, I know next to nothing else. We are moving into the great unknown. Our plans are to head west as soon as the packers and movers are done loading up our stuff, drive to visit family in the mid-west then more family in southern California and then still more family in northern California for Christmas before heading north. All that with 2 adults, 4 kids, 2 dogs, and a U-Haul trailer. (cymbal crash)