1st Day of Preschool

Pictures from CA

Nehemiah sleeping in Mandy's bed

Nehemiah sleeping with Renee

A Joyful Christian

This past weekend, I got to spend time with Elin, a friend from Cal Poly. Elin recently came to Christ and her husband soon followed. My heart leaps with joy that i have 2 more friends that I get to spend eternity with. Spending time with Elin reminded me of my early Christian days, days that i now find myself longing for. The days when you just couldnt wait to get away to spend time to pray and read your Bible instead of having it be one of the things that you "need to do". How thoughts of God consume your mind and your heart and are spilled out of your mouth. Elin and I spent alot of time talking about how God works in our lives. I loved to hear how God has changed her heart about things that she once felt strongly about. When she left to go home I found myself praying, God i want THAT desire I once had for you, back. What do i need to do? God spoke to me today when i asked Him again. His answer was simple.

"Let ME consume you."







ok God Consume me...

Some Wisdom from Ireland?

I got an email today from a friend out in Cali that I thought I'd share that sheds a little bit of wisdom and insight into our current elections. It's a little bit old but still humorous...

An email from Ireland to their brethren in the States...a point to ponder:


'We, in Ireland, can't figure out why people are even bothering to hold
an election in the United States
On one side, you have a pants wearing lawyer, married to a lawyer who
can't keep his pants on, who's in a long and heated primary against
a lawyer who goes to the wrong church who is married to yet another lawyer
who doesn't like whites or even like the country her husband wants to run.
Now...On the other side, you have a nice old war hero whose name starts
with the appropriate Mc terminology married to a good looking younger
woman who owns a beer distributorship.
What in Lords name are you lads thinking over there in the colonies, acting like
there's a choice?

Okay, so I thought that I would put up a post showing exactly what I meant in the past about "how the modern man catches his dinner." In retrospect, it is more how the modern soldier (not the ones you see on TV at big bases like Kandahar or Bagram who have "boring" jobs) goes about getting his groceries. Very close to our base is a little valley between two ridges roughly the size of about six to eight football fields. Not very big but big enough to do what we need to do. At the predetermined time, or in most cases twenty to thirty minutes late, a big plane will fly over and eject anywhere from 12 -16 pallets of whatever they are delivering out it's backside. As it does this, parachutes deploy and gently deliver the precious cargo to the ground. Of course, by gently, I mean quickly and in some cases it involves parachutes getting tangled and not doing their job, or even a pallet full of Afghani Evian bottles coming completely apart and falling at full speed from 2000 feet above. That's only happened a couple of times though. Generally, this is how we get our fuel, food, and water; anything else comes by helicopter.

There are also some other pictures I put up because I had mentioned that the plane is sometimes (by sometimes, I mean rarely) on time. There are these local children (by children I would like to insinuate demon spawn, but I won't) that are very cute, but would steal the tires off the truck when your back was turned if they could find a way. The other day, this one girl, the one beating the living crap out of that cow above, had climbed up into the turret of Mike's truck, found a Dole fruit snack cup, and was eating it before he knew what was going on. She is also the one to whom we fed the Mocha flavored, caffiene enhanced Clifshot Gel.

I think there is another post of pictures that I have yet neglected to put up, but I have to figure out what that is, then I'll post it. Otherwise, word to your mother.

Something I came across today

So, I have another example of why we should all be wary of the internet and its absolute inability to protect itself from being absolutely corrupted. I received a message on my Facebook from a friend in NC, asking me my opinion on an email she received. Here is a copy of the text of that email:

Hello everyone,
As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to 'The War Zone'. I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service. So really he was just here to make a showing for the American's back home that he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that are providing the freedom that they are providing for you. I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United States. I just don't understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.
If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.

In service,
CPT Jeffrey S. Porter
Battle Captain
TF Wasatch
American Soldier
(married and father of 6 children)

Other than the fact that, as a military officer, CPT Porter should have a little bit better grasp of the written English language, I agree with his opinion about Barak Obama. Someone else, I think it was my mom, asked me about this the other day about the senator's visit to Afghanistan and I gave a similar response, although, I don't have first hand knowledge of what happened at Bagram Airbase. I am stationed in the middle of nowhere on a tiny base I am not allowed to name. As far as I could tell from the news reports, Obama's chief reason for visiting Afghanistan was to meet with the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai; however, it wouldn't be prudent for him to come all the way here and not stop at a military base to show "support" for the troops. I doubt that he was genuinely interested in seeing the troops, but more so in appearing to be in tune with the world situation and the global war on terror. However, I was not there, so I cannot attest to his sincerity or to the actual specifics of his visit.

That being said, I did a little research on the good ole internet, something everyone should do when receiving something like this. I tend to be very wary of when something like this hits the email. What I found was that this "CPT Jeffrey S. Porter" is a military intelligence officer in a Utah National Guard unit, but not the "battle captain", an official position, that he cited in the email. The press release about this email says that Obama never went to any clamshell tents to play basketball, nor did he "blow off" soldiers and not shake hands. In fact, troops from his home state were invited to come and meet with him during his stay. I don't like Barak Obama and I won't vote for him, but it is this kind of nonsense that makes people look down on the military and if you are going to attempt to discredit someone, then your information needs to be above reproach. This is one of the first laws of PSYOP. Anyway, I just wanted to pass it along, so that if, or more likely when, you receive this email, please reply to all and let people know that it is not true. Again, I have no desire for the election of Barak Obama as our next president, but I also have scruples and do not see this as playing fair.

God Bless and Have a Good Night.

Fun With Horses

Little known to most people, we have on our camp about 19 Afghan horses. They are not too unlike American Quarter Horses, except that they are not near as big. As you can see in the pictures, they are not much taller than six feet, although I couldn't tell you what that is in hands (unit of measure for a horses height). After I put these pictures up on my Facebook page, I got a lot of questions from people about why we had horses and why I, specifically, was working with them.

Without going into too much detail and giving away a lot of information I shouldn't, suffice to say that I work with a unit that "thinks outside the box" and does things a little differently. The main purpose for these horses if they were in shape, and they aren't, is to use them for military purposes. Why would we need horses if we have trucks? Trucks make a lot of noise, a lot of dust, and require a lot of maintenance. Horses are generally quieter and much less overt if you wanted to get from point A to point B, without a great deal of notice. But, like I said before, these horses aren't in the appropriate physical shape to do that sort of thing. The unit that was here before us, either lacked the knowledge or the motivation to take care of the horses in a way that would keep them in shape and mission ready. So, now, we will spend a better part of our deployment doing that, and hopefully pass on that to the next unit.

When I say "we", there is much more emphasis on the other people in the "we", than "me". Prior to working with these horses, I knew how to mount and dismount a horse that was already saddled and could ride it if it was docile and not prone to being rebellious. However, some of the other guys here grew up around horses and have a good idea of what they are doing and have experience in handling horses that are less than agreeable. One of the big parts of these horses being out of shape is that they were rarely handled or ridden prior to us getting here, so some of them are quite against the idea of being ridden. They're nice enough to let you mount them, but they have no intention of letting you tell them where to go.

Some of the other things that we have been doing with them beside exercise is health maintenance. The pen that the horses are kept in is pretty big, maybe about one quarter of a football field. It is all dirt, though, so their hooves never get worn down requiring a fair bit of work regularly. There is a furrier (sp?, guy who shoes horses) in town but from I hear he is overpriced and doesn't do good work. So, every once in a while, each horse has to have it's hooves cleaned out and trimmed, much like what Debra would do with goat hooves.

Another thing that we learned about horse maintenance is called floating the teeth. By the way, I think I forgot to mention that we got a veterinarian in a couple of weeks ago to teach us a lot of this stuff, but he is leaving in a couple of days, which is why we have to learn it because he has to move on to the next place or something. Anyway, teeth floating. Horses are much like cattle or goats in that they grind down their food, which for horses consists of hay, grains, and feed corn, before they swallow. After a while, their teeth become sharp to the point that they can no longer grind the food properly, so you have to take something that resembles a large dental mirror with a "float" or metal file on the end and grind down the points on their teeth until they aren't sharp. The horses are not fond of this and like to fight it, so we had to sedate a few of the horses while doing this.

That is where another learning lesson came in and that was how to IV inject a horse with fluids or medications. Pretty cool stuff really, basically you just stick a few fingers into the horses neck to pinch their jugular vein, which inflates the vein higher up. Once inflated you insert the needle until you get blood flow, connect the syringe to the needle, and in goes the horses cocktail.

The reason you need a ruffie for the horse is because when floating the teeth, it is best to put a speculum on the horse, otherwise it will bite your arm, like one of the horses did one day to the vet, causing a very nasty mark. The speculum holds the horses mouth open so that you can stick your hand in to check the teeth for points and not get bit. It doesn't put the horse completely out, but it does look like its had too much to drink.

The last thing we learned how to do, was to castrate a horse. Seriously, I thought that it was going to be a lot bloodier and a lot more disgusting than it really was. This time we gave the horse a cocktail to start, and then gave it something else to knock it out for about an hour, although the whole procedure only took about half an hour. After it was all done, the horse woke up, and started walking around; I am not sure how that is even possible. A few people had asked on Facebook why I was learning to do this and why the army was spending the time, energy, money, etc., to castrate horses. First of all, these are our horses, they don't belong to random people in our area where we have arbitrarily decided to go and emasculinate there animals. It is for the same purpose that people spay or neuter their animals. We have 19 horses here and if the males were not fixed, we would have many more horses. At one time this base had almost 30 horses, which were admittedly too many, but about nine or ten of those died when the Taliban, who has absolutely no concept of aim, shot a rocket at our base and it landed in a feed trough. Also, just for FYI, there have been no rockets fired at our base since I got here; apparently, my reputation preceeds me and they are afraid. Anyway, you have to fix your animals if you don't want them to breed. That's just how it works.

Another question I have been asked is why I am doing this. Well, I have a specific job that I do, but I don't do it 24 hours a day. There are some days when my job requires about an hour of the total day; however, I can't just do my one hour and then go back to bed. On this particular camp with its particular personnel numbers, everyone has to pitch in to do various "camp work" so that everything runs smoothly. Basically, there is a lot of efficiency going on here. So, a lot of the time, when my time is not consumed by my job, I help out with the horses because it is interesting and it is something that I can actually post stories about on the internet, unlike some of the other things I do.

So, there you have it. We have horses, they are getting healthier, I ride the docile ones, and we castrate the horses out of necessity, but only our horses.