31 Days Until Summer

I think I told some of you that I suppose to be going up to New York in a couple weeks. Well as of now I do not think that is going to happen until later because of hold ups on the clients end. I keep meaning to add this story to my post and I keep forgetting. I work in a community style office building. There are several businesses on the floor where I work and we share the secretary and the kitchen area and such. There is one particular lady who takes smoke breaks throughout the day (outside of course). I’m not exactly sure what she smokes, but whatever it is it has flavoring. I know this because anytime I get in the elevator after she has been it, it smells like cloves…ham cloves. Anytime I smell where she has been I think of ham and honestly she kinda reminds me of a ham and that maybe because she smells like cloves.

So Chip got home safely, he was the one in Afghanistan with the Navy. He said in his e-mail that he has been working on his honey do list that she has been saving for 15 months. This week I have my drill weekend for the Guard. I’m looking forward to it and then again I am not. The only reason I am not is because I have two papers due this week. A 2-4 page paper on the destiny of the unevangelize and the nature of hell and the second paper is 5 page paper on the Canonization of the Bible, how and the councils. Both of them are due Monday, but Saturday and Sunday I will not be able to work on them and I have my regular class work….come on summer. Besides the class work, class is going well. Christianity history is definitely interesting and my theology class is as well. I’m really looking forward to summer for the time off from school. School has really been taking up a lot of time from things I would like to do and miss doing. One such thing is mtn. bike riding. I was able to get out and ride Friday but that is only like my 3^rd or 4^th time riding since the new year.

Some good news, at least I hope so, over the weekend Jen and I filled out the paper work to adopt a puppy. We were originally looking into getting a german shepard mixed with a pit, but because of the restricted dog breed policy we could not and now we are looking into getting a lab and hound mix. We are just waiting on the homeowner to tell us what the pet deposit would be, if any. This is a big thing for the Evans family because for some time now I have been lobbying for a dog and it’s officially happening. Once and if we get the dog I will let you all know.Until next time folks.

It’s A Start

I’m starting to feel better so I ventured off to work today.  Although I’m still congested I a lot better then two days ago.  I cannot believe where the time has gone, but I only have 2 weeks left for my first 8 week classes.  My theology class I’m doing great in.  I’ve needed to write three papers so far “Those Who Have Never Heard Have They No Hope”, “What Is Man”, & “The Role of Women in the Church A Survey of Current Approaches” and aced them all.  I have one more paper to write this week on….I’m not even sure yet.  But I’m sure it’ll be a good one.

Being sick all weekend really put a wrench in the gears.  We’re suppose to be moving in two weeks and we haven’t even started packing yet.  Next weekend is a no go for me because I’ll be at drill.  So packing will be done during the week I suppose.  We really do not have a lot because during the several moves we have unloaded a lot of stuff that we did not need.

Till Next time folks…

Got another letter from Chip yesterday.

Hello everybody, I know you ask when I am coming home but I am still here having fun.  I will be home soon.   Today I was on the ANA base checking in with the civil affairs officer and checking on First Sgt Dodd’s truck I broke while he is on leave.  They have to replace the drivers door.  We had very high winds here 3 days ago where the cold air coming down from the Hindu Kush mountains met the warm air coming up from the south in Iraq.  I saw roofs go that day.  I felt like I could be the flying Nun in my booney hat.  For those of you old enough to remember Sally Fields in the tv series help out the poor disadvantage younger generation.  Any way I digress.  The ANA base has a recruit training center attached to it and while my interpreter, Sheik, and I were walking to the motorpool we ran into a new recruit squad of 20 brand spanking new soldiers and the drill sgt was trying to teach them how to march Soviet style and it was h hilarious.  I haven’t seen Sheik laugh so hard since I have been here.  But wait it gets better.  On the way back from the motorpool we run into them again and the drill sgt stops them in front of me.  I say to myself what a golden opportunity I have here.  So I tell Sheik to translate what I am going to say to these brand new soldiers and I want him to bellow it out like a drill sgt.  Now being the nice kind guy that I am I start yelling at them for doing a lousy job of learning how to march.  I then I tell them I expect them to be the best ANA soldiers there ever were! I popped them to attention and inspected them.  I know you had to be there but these poor kids were scared of me while Sheik and I are trying hard not to laugh.   I then finished my motivational speech by telling them they have to be the best of the best because I will be watching from the shadows and Allah help them if they don’t become the best.  I played on their superstitious nature with the shadow part.  You should have seen their looks.  I then turned them over to their drill sgt and watched them march off and they were better.  Sheik was rolling on the ground with laughter and he asked if we could do this again.  Maybe we will and maybe we won’t.  Live from Afghanistan Chief Petty Officer Submarine Service Charles E. Wisard, a man of many talents and I am trying to behave.

Following Up

I guess I should have followed up my statement of how I would have done things differently in my previous post. More than likely served my time overseas either in Iraq or Afghanistan and I would have taken advantage overall of the opportunities I had. In regards to the Reserves I don’t know how I could have done things differently. I went into it thinking I would be doing all this great stuff, but that was not the case as explained in my last post. I can only do so much when I’m limited to one unit within traveling distance and openings. April 24th, 2008 my contract will be up and I will be out of the Army totally. Jen and I have talked about me re-enlisting, but if I were to re-enlist it would not be into the Army. More than likely it would either be the Air-Force or the Navy. At the same time I don’t think I could leave Jen back home by herself because more than likely I would be deployed. What I am learning through marriage is that less and less I can no longer only think about myself, but I need to think about my wife as well.

Thanks to Jen she was able to get a picture to me of the problem with the formatting.  I never saw the problem because I avoid Internet Explorer like the plague and I’m assuming the ones who are seeing problems are using Internet Explorer.  I use Firefox and the formatting was always correct for me.  I’ll be sure to check the formatting from now on.

Got another e-mail from Chip today:

Hello everyone, another update from Afghanistan.  My time is getting short so I want to thank all of you for your support and I am asking that no more packages be sent because I might not get them.  We only got 6 mail flights in Jan. due to the extreme winter weather and so far in Feb. we have received 3.  We went out on another HA mission today.  I am at the point in my deployment I get to pick and chose which missions I go on and I get to assign the others.  I did not go out on today’s but I should have.   It was winter emergency relief aid to 10 villages and we were to take it to the soccer stadium and distribute it there.  When the team got to the stadium there was a huge crowd waiting for them and they rushed the 7 and half ton truck full of the supplies.   The Afghan soldiers tried to cordon off the truck, then shouted at the people and then tried to threaten them with their weapons and bayonets.  None of this frightened the people and they got on the truck and started throwing things off to the crowd.  My mission commander I assigned to this mission told me it was a mess.  The ANA soldiers did manage to rescue 2 bundles of blankets and bring them back to me.  Why should I have gone.  Experience.  With close to 100 HA combat missions under my belt I would have told the convoy to keep going and park a half mile down the road and send the Afghan Col. back in a truck to speak to the village elders and set up a 2nd drop zone away from the crowd.  We were lucky no one got hurt today.  The team I sent had some rookies but the team leader was a veteran of HA missions.  This shows we can all make mistakes in judgement from me on down.  This will also a good learning tool to use for future missions.  I have to send these people out as training because I won’t be here in another couple of months to continue to run these missions.  I have started to pass the baton over to the next group.   The last 3 weeks of my time deployed will be flying, turning in gear, and demobing.  In case you are wondering I had to learn the hard way too. I was on a HA mission when a crowd overwhelmed the Afghan soldiers and went for the truck.  We managed to get the truck moved before they got on the truck.  So far 90%  of all the HA missions end in success.

Behave

It All Makes Sense

Every now and then the news will report a positive story out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but most of the time it’s something negative.  My father in-law for some time now has been sending me e-mails of a friend of his who is in Afghanistan with the National Guard.  It’s really good stuff to read about the positive stuff.  You know what, in the year or so I have been receiving the letters I can’t recall one of them being negative…interesting.

Hi everyone, I did a Humanitarian mission to downtown Herat to the Deaf Center today.   I was pretty good.  They are teaching the deaf Dari and English, math, carpentry, seamstress, have an art school and computer classes for the Deaf kids.  I talked to the director and he was deaf.  It went like this.  I talked to my interpreter who talked to the technical director who signed to the director who signed back to the technical director who talked to my interpreter who then spoke to me.  They were excited to see us and the kids wanted to show us there skills in English and math.  They wrote things on the chalk boards in English and then did math problems in English.  They showed us their carpentry shop, seamstress shop, computer lab, and their art school.   It was pretty fabulous.  The disabled ctr, blind ctr, and the deaf ctr have hardly any money coming in and I look at what they are accomplishing and it puts our systems to shame.  Yes I am going to help them with some aid.  I am in the process of getting it together.  Missions like these make it all worthwhile.   In the deaf ctr the women are more women working there and this ctr has 5 stated goals.  I will be writing an article on the deaf ctr this week.   Well that is all for now.

Behave and I will try.

It dawned on me this morning as I was reading this.  Most of you who read my blog are aware of my attitude towards enlisting into the Army Reserve.  It all make perfect sense now, my attitude isn’t anything against the war or the people I served with, it was because when I went to weekend drill I taught myself how to pick desk locks with a paperclip, I sat in on a lot of useless meetings that had absolutely nothing to do with anything, oh and I cannot forget the numerous formations to wait around for who knows what.  I never did anything like the stuff Chip talks about during my drill weekends…heck I didn’t even do any type of training.  The most training I did was in basic and that was almost 8 years ago.  We rarely went to the firing range and when we did I spent more time sitting waiting to fire then actually firing.  I think back on my deployment and It stunk being away from my family, but I think if I had a second chance I would have done it differently.

As I get more e-mails from Chip I will keep posting them for you to read.