AF Chaplain Candidate Tour - update 3

I'm back. Blogger decided for a while that my blog was spam so I couldn't post anything new until they reviewed it and realized that there is in fact an actual person behind this thing.

The past two weeks have been full of hospital visitation, invocations at various base functions, and meetings in preparation for two 5K runs that the chapel is sponsoring in the next few weeks. We spent the last two days going around to every building and every office we could get into passing out info about the runs and making sure everyone knows about them. The first run is tomorrow morning so I've got to get this done pretty soon and get in the bed. We've got to be at the chapel at 0530 to get everything loaded and set up at the run site.

I've been scheduled to preach in the Evangelical service at the chapel on 5 August. I have the scripture that I am going to preach on and have some illustrations that I know I want to include, now I just need to sit down and figure out how to put everything together. This will be my first experience in preaching a sermon instead of leading a Bible study so pray that I would accurately convey the Word to those listening and that I would not be too nervous.

AF Chaplain Candidate Tour - update 2

Our candidate team is complete. Two more chaplain candidates arrived today and both of them are guys that I went through COT with last summer. So now there are four of us, two Baptist seminary students and two Jewish rabbinical students.

I got the briefing and tour from the hospital chaplain today so I guess the ministry begins in earnest tomorrow. The biggest challenge I anticipate right now is not getting lost in the maze that they call a hospital here. The next two weeks should be very interesting and intensely busy. The chapel staff is large but will be stretched pretty thin over the next two weeks so we candidates will get lots of experience in a hurry.

AF Chaplain Candidate Tour

I started my first AF Chaplain Candidate tour today. I drove up to Wright-Patterson AFB yesterday and got my car registered, got checked into billeting, and ran to the Base Exchange (the on base equivalent of WalMart or Target for those of you not in the military) to pick up a few things I needed. The chapel staff here is all very friendly (as you would expect a chapel staff to be). I actually ran into a couple of people I know. One of the other candidates went through training with me last summer. The other person is a reserve chaplain who was actually the grader for one of my classes at Southern while he was working on his PhD there.

The day went pretty well. I got to Chapel 1 about 0715 and chatted with the NCOIC until my sponsor arrived a little later. After going out to breakfast with my sponsor all four candidates who are here right now went with one of the chaplains to a Commander's Call (an awards ceremony and a time of information briefing) for one of the squadrons. We then all went to the club for lunch and spent the afternoon moving some equipment out of a few rooms that the chapel doesn't use anymore so they can be turned over and then doing some maintenance in one of the chapels. I was done for the day and back in my room by 1600 (4 PM). I'm looking forward to finding out what the remainder of the summer holds.

too long away from all things LSU

OK, we have officially been in Kentucky for too long as of tonight. I was just glancing through the headlines on my "My Yahoo!" page and saw one that read "UK officials widen hunt in terror attack." My first thought was "What happened at University of Kentucky?" Sorry, I've got to cut this short and go listen to LSU pregrame about 50 times in a row to purge myself of this Kentucky-itis.