Well, I'm back. Didn't send a message yesterday because I had to devote my free time to preparing for a worship service.
I'm a staff planner, not assigned to a pastoral position right now, but the chaplain responsible for pastoral care to the Headquarters of US Army Central didn't come to this exercise because he's in the process of getting ready to be transferred - it takes some time to get packed and do the administrative out-processing to leave a unit, and he doesn't have any leeway because he's going to a school - the Chaplains Captains Career Course.
His plan for worship services was to provide transportation from the command post to the chapel here at the camp in Kuwait. The staff-planner chaplains didn't think that was a good plan, mostly because all of the Protestant services offered at the chapel fall during the day shift. That means the day shift Soldiers would have to take off nearly two hours in the middle of their shifts (including the length of the service plus round-trip transportation time with a little dawdling built-in. For the night-shift Soldiers it wouldn't be so hard to get to the day-time services though it
might be hard to stay awake.
So, we - the staff-planner- type chaplains - scheduled two worship services actually at the command post. My partner did one at 11:00 am, for the day-shift guys. It was a brief service, and - since there was no travel time involved - only took them from their work for just over a half-hour. Twelve people showed up for his service. I did one at 9:00 pm. Other than the chaplain assistant and I, only one person showed up.
I don't take it personally, though. I'm reasonably certain that the night-shift people who wanted to go to church went during the day. They had 12 hours off, so it's not a hardship for the night shift folk to stay up long enough to go to a service in the morning after the end of their shift, or get up early enough to go to service before they go on duty.
Most people would rather go to a service in the chapel with a small but established congregation, and a good music team than an ad-hoc service at the command post where singing is going to be a capella.
The last of our chaplain team for the command post arrived yesterday afternoon, so we're now full-strength and working the shifts we'll usually end up working. For the time being, I'm scheduled from 3:00 pm to midnight. It's nice that we have enough people in the Unit Ministry Team that we don't have to work 12-hour shifts. The drawback is that most of the command post staff ARE working 12-hour shifts, which means that they're coming and going en masse while those of us who are working non-standard shifts are trying to sleep.
However, I've been getting adequate sleep. The coming and going disturbs my rest, but I have been able - so far - to go back to sleep when that happens ,so I'm doing OK.
The exercise itself hasn't started yet, so we're still doing refresher training on our equipment and rehearsals of command post procedures and schedules. Lacking input from an exercise scenario, I've been spending much of my time setting up ways to exploit technology to make our job easier. For example there's a web page for the Unit Ministry Team where I have posted announcements for the religious programs on the camp and in the command post, and a bunch of links to useful documents that members of the team can study.
Those of you who have worked in a military headquarters know that every staff section keeps a "Duty Officer's Log" - usually on paper on a form called a Department of the Army Form 1594. One of the things I've done is to set up a web page where we can keep our log and it be viewed by all members of the Command Chaplain's Office. Since we are spread out in three command posts in three locations (two in Kuwait and one in Atlanta) this is useful so that we can all see each other's logs, updated immediately, and all of us in the same command can update the log for that command post at the same time (if we need to) from different computers. We can also attach documents to the log which provide supporting information to the log entries - which lets us keep the log entries brief as they're supposed to be.
The log is on a secure, military website, so we can put classified information on the log without fear of disclosure - and we always use some real, classified information in training environments even when the scenario we're training on is fictional - and the settings on the logs are such that only members of the Command Chaplain's Office can see the logs, and only the members of a particular headquarters can write on the log for that headquarters.
Other than "Tales from the Sandbox" the key activities for the day are dropping off laundry for cleaning, picking up the laundry I dropped off three days ago, and watching some TV via the Internet. Hey, if I'm going to pay for Internet access, while I'm here in Kuwait I might as well get my money's worth out of it.
Besides I can watch skits from one of my favorite shows, which has been out of syndication for quite a while. Here's a hint. Anyone remember this theme song?
"It's time to put in makeup, it's time to light the lights.
It's time to get things get things started on the ...... Show tonight!"
OK, so it's not exactly intellectual stimulation. Still, it's fun and it passes time!
Fr. Jonathan Landon +
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