Eclipse and Super Moon!

The picture on the top, the yellowish one, is the picture of the Super Moon rising over the Florida panhandle treeline along the edge of St. Andrew's Bay. We were watching it rise from our docked boat. The picture on the bottom is a slightly fuzzy picture of the eclipse of the moon that occurred shortly before Christmas. It was the first eclipse I have ever seen in person and it was a really neat experience! I will not forget getting all bundled up and setting up my tripod and then laying on the kids' bean bags in the quiet cool, gazing up at the moon in the clear sky. I never could get too relaxed though because my ear was ever open for the sound of an approaching bear!!! That would have truly made the eclipse unforgettable, but thankfully no bears interrupted my moon watching that night! Isn't God's creation breathtaking?

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth!

Elizabeth is now a very grown up six years old, as of April 4. She really had a wonderful birthday with some very special moments over the weekend before her Monday birthday. However, the big event was her "Tangled" birthday party last Friday. (If you haven't seen this movie, you definitely need to! There's some magic and a really bad lady, but Elizabeth thinks it is "Christian made" because of the powerful ending! I won't ruin it for you. Watch it and see!) So, we had a doughnut "tower" cake. That was the highlight of the party, I'd say. There were seven girls including Elizabeth ranging in age from four to ten years old. The party began with painting (just like Rapunzel) and making their own "Wanted" posters (another part of the movie). Then I braided everyone's hair and put silk flowers in the braids, just like Rapunzel. (You better believe I was braiding fast!) Then we played "Hide the Chameleon". Andrew somehow happens to own, not one but two toy chameleons, and Pascal, Rapunzel's pet chameleon, played a main role in the film. We finished up with the doughnut cake and raspberry lemonade and gift-opening. She was pretty worn out after all that excitement! She also received a Bible for her birthday. She made "official" the work God had been doing in her heart to me on February 15, praying to ask Jesus to be the Lord of her life since He had loved her so much He'd died for her sins. It doesn't get much better than that! She also loves art, so in addition to a neat art set she received from her grandparents, her dad and me and brother and sister gave her paints (washable!), paper and an easel. She's painted nearly every day since!

Happy Belated Birthday to Andrew!

Andrew turned eight years old on March 7. He had a skating birthday party with three friends and their siblings (and parents!) in attendance. They got a little bit of video game money, plenty of lemonade, soda, hot dogs and cake and ice cream, and a ton of skating! The party was scheduled from 12-4! We were exhausted, so we quit at 3:30, after the last guest left, of course. As you can imagine, skating in low light conditions did not provide a very good environment for skating pictures. Even with my expertise (ha, ha!), it proved to be too great of a challenge for me! So, only cake and present pictures. He saw the cakes at the commissary and decided to go with a dinosaur cake with an exploding volcano. I know. That's really cool to an eight year old! I was a little sad that he didn't want me to make him a cake or cookie, but I was really relieved that the cake could be marked off the list just like that! The gift he has enjoyed the most has proved to be his Action Bible, from his dad and me. It's most of the Bible portrayed in graphic novel/comic book style. Some of the pictures and the general style of the drawings is a little offensive to me, especially in something as sacred as the Bible, but I've learned to look past that, and spent time reading it with Andrew. He's really learning a lot and we know that the truth is going forth and being planted deep within him. We believe it will grow a strong, tall tree one day and bear much fruit!

Why I Love Thursdays This Deployment

Wake up, shower, work, work, work, work, eat, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, eat, work, work, scho...(usually school is an impossibility), sleep.

That is the gist of my typical day over here. Not Thursdays. Now, before I explain why I love Thursdays over here so much I must dispel any notions that my joy on Thursdays comes in any way from the cultural tendencies of this area. See, Thursday to a Muslim in an Islamic Republic is like Friday nights in America. Friday is their Djuma, or holy day, and so there is no work on Fridays (for the most part). Therefore, Thursday nights usually involve a lot of excitement among the Afghans. There are rumors of what they do, but I'd rather you do your own research rather than listen to my conjecture - needless to say, most of the rumors are not very flattering.

I digress.

So then, why is Thursday of such significance to me? Because for a few hours I am able to escape work, school, and my B-Hut (which I don't see much of) and worship the Lord at practice for the Chapel praise team.

The group of singers and musicians is dynamic and diverse but the music is wonderful, the fellowship is second-to-none, and the ability to play as loud as I want and sing however I want to praise God is without equal to me. I can't do that anywhere - not in my B-Hut (the walls are merely 3/8" plywood that seem to amplify rather than dampen sound) and not in my office (the office is truly occupied like, 17 hours a day sometimes). The Chapel on the other hand, provides a place where I can finally get back to music and open, uninterrupted praise.

Sundays are good too (when we actually foster praise and worship) - but it is occasionally too difficult standing on that platform to force that "performer" mentality out of my mind, and I seem to sometimes lose track as to why I'm really serving to begin with. Instead, Thursday practice is a judgment-free, worship-filled event with only the hours of the practice to contain our praise.

VFF: Everlasting!

We are surrounded by the reminder of the Almighty - even in a place such as this.

"My heart and my soul,
I give you control,
consume me from the inside out.
Let justice and praise,
become my embrace,
to love you from the inside out."

It is incredible to think that the same power who created these mountains lives inside me and is consuming me from within!

"Everlasting, Your light will shine when all else fades!"

Even these mountains will crumble and fall eventually, but His love never ends.

"Neverending, Your Glory goes beyond all fame!"

The glories of war are bestowed with pomp and circumstance yet are as fleeting as the tides.
Conversely, His Glory arrived in unassuming fashion but will see no end.




(Above quoted lyrics are from the inspired heart of Joel Houston, From the Inside Out, 2006. Associated commentary by David S. on this 1st Valleys Fill First post.)

Back to the 'stan

Yep. It's cold here.

This is my Bhut after a night of wet snow.

So, in case you didn't already know, I'm back in Afghanistan fulfilling my service obligation. Leaving the family was pretty tough, but I felt a little better this time because of several reasons - primarily because I knew where I was going and I had a pretty good idea about the job I was going to perform as it was essentially the same thing I did for a year on the last tour. Additionally, I was definitely more excited about being on just a 6-monther vs the 365 our family endured from '09-10.

The only surprise awaiting me ended up being serendipitous. See, I was expecting to go to Kabul again and work out of a camp in the downtown area - one I had spent some time at before. After leaving Manas AB, Krygystan, my wingman and I arrived at Bagram AB and shuffled our hundreds of pounds of gear from the fixed (airplanes) terminal to the rotary (helicopters) terminal. Thankfully, we were able to sneak on to a couple of UH-60 Blackhawks that flew us straight to a compound not far from our new home. Upon arrival, we waited just a couple hours before our predecessors showed up to drive us to our new home for the next six months.

I spent the next day settling in to the office (I would be in temporary open-bay billeting until a room opened up in 4-6 weeks) and the next evening my boss' boss shook my world a little by advising me that he really needed me at Bagram instead. I was really enjoying the setting and getting comfortable with the turnover but that doesn't really matter much in the military - so I saluted smartly and found the first trip to Bagram.

A few days later, the office dropped me off at Kabul International Airport and I was able to make it to Bagram that day. Interestingly enough, whereas a room was at least 4 weeks out for me in Kabul, the new team I was joining already had an available private room open for me! That improved my situation greatly and so here I am, at Bagram Airfield, engineering the future for the Afghans once again.

Highlights of the last 3 weeks

The top left picture is of the kids in a model of a space shuttle at a museum here in PCB. The top right is a work of art. The finished picture can only be seen when a light is on and the shadow becomes the rest of the piece. Can you tell what it is?! Bottom left is David and me being silly. Bottom right is Hannah raising the sails and me driving the boat on a sunny winter day when David was home from training.

We are Alive and Well

I just got an email from a friend from college whom I haven't spoken to in quite a while. The subject line of the email was "Rachel, are you still alive?" After I laughed, I read the email and she pointed out that we had only posted a couple of updates on our blog in the last year. With David deployed again, I think that the usefulness of the blog will present itself again and we will use it a little more often!

The picture on the top left is Hannah Joy caught red handed getting into an itty bitty spiderman tackle box! Top right is Andrew and his friend Andrew, both in Cub Scouts now. Bottom left is Andrew and our new pet, Goldie. Our neighbors moved, and she needed a home. Bottom right is beautiful Elizabeth.