Long-Awaited Update

     I suppose it's time for an update. It has been over a year since my last one and for the sake of future me, I want to record the events of the last year and change before the timeline of it all gets muddled up. I get older and my brain gets more like mush with every time I jump from an airplane. 

     

     I finally came back to Fort Bragg in September/October 2023. (Please note that as of Trump becoming president in 2024 the base is now back to Fort Bragg from it's short stint as Fort Liberty) My family and I moved back to our house that we rented out for the 3 years we were in Texas for recruiting duty and I started working as the treatment NCOIC for the White Falcons. This went on until about the end of December 2023. 

     In January of 2024 we decided to buy a house that was farther away from the city around base and closer to my in-laws new house; By closer, by the way, I mean literally across the street. The street in question is a fairly busy country road, but a single-lane country road nonetheless. So once again, I self-inflicted the pains of moving my household again, the second time in one year. 

     My job continued like normal until around May 2024, when I participated in Swift Response 2024 with the White Falcons, serving as the Drop Zone Senior Medic. This experience was both really cool and really terrifying for me; I despise flying so the international flights over the ocean were a little too much for my liking but the experience of another country in Europe was pretty cool and I won't forget my time there. Perhaps that experience will warrant a separate post later. 

     Anyways, pretty much right after coming back from that I picked up my promotion to Sergeant First Class in July 2024. This resulted in both an increase in pay and a huge increase in responsibility. I took over the medical platoon as the platoon sergeant (Platoon sergeant being a position that is a seriously love/hate relationship) and the battalion senior medic. Even better, the time that I took over for the platoon sergeant also happened to be right about the time when our battalion picked up the tasking cycle; a wonderful time of non-stop medical coverages which requires daily coordination for multiple events whose details are fuzzy at best and will change on the day they happen. It was a terrible 4 months and I'm glad we all survived. 

    October - November 2024 started off with a series of nice field exercises that lasted about 2-3 weeks each. I was cold but thankfully not super wet for most of it. During this time as the platoon sergeant I learned alot from those who had been in the division longer than me and we were able to hammer down a nice rhythm for setting up the Role-1 by being forced to move positions every day, if not multiple times a day. I dug a lot of foxholes. 

     With the end of November we welcomed the American tradition of thanksgiving/Christmas work slump. We took a copious amount of vacation and got to visit my family in Texas for a while while still managing to have plenty of days back at our house in North Carolina to relax. A much needed break not only for what had already been done but also for what was to come...

     Towards the end of January 2025 we had a 2 week Brigade field exercise which was pretty bad. Of note, it started off bad with myself and my platoon leader, Justin, having to jump into the field. I had kind of a bad landing and hurt my knee. To make matters worse it was a pretty decently far movement from where I landed to the meet up point. I then got a an hour nap or so on the freezing ground before the dawn where my loyal platoon arrived warm and happy in the FLA's. I was not happy, not warm and not wanting to have to make any decisions. The rest of the time got better day by day as I got more sleep and food. Overall, not that great of a time.

     All this time of training really led up to the biggest training event of all, JRTC. A month of being away from home with 2 weeks of that being in the field in lovely Louisiana. Thankfully, March-April is a pretty decent time to go. It's not super hot during the day and it's cool enough at night to get cozy and repel the bugs most nights. Once again, I found myself jumping into the field on this one with rucksack that was way too heavy in a Canadian C-130, which is smaller than the American version. This event taught me a few things that I'll highlight: 1) You can pack way lighter by not changing your clothes that often, I literally never changed any item of clothing for two weeks and I was smelly but okay. 2) More of a reinforcement than a lesson, but the poncho is the single most versatile and important piece of field gear you can buy, so invest on a good one. 3) Don't trust the water from the water cans and bring a filter. I brought a Sawyer filter and it may have saved my several times after filtering cloudy/chunky water from the army water cans. 4) Having a sleeping pad is essential; the earth will suck the warmth out of you even on warmer nights. 

     Mid-April found us returning home as champions who would be rewarded with an immense amount of work to do in order to meet mission ready posture. I had a lot of late days and did so much admin work I can still feel the keyboard on my fingers... But we survived this time and I was able to successfully pass of my position as platoon sergeant and I moved up to brigade staff as the senior medic in May 2025. 

     During all this time my family and were blessed to have almost immediately found a church that taught the bible truth only and put Jesus first; not fancy music or showmanship with no regard for personal taste, only the will of God. The boys enjoy going to church and have many friends there. One of their favorite things is Trail Life, which is like boy scouts but for Christians, happens once a week with the occasional weekend away to camp! My wife homeschools our two big boys, which is challenging but rewarding, at times, for her. The frustrations are worth knowing they are not getting exposed, too early, to all the wayward ways of the world that are on display in the public school system. They got really into Pokemon for a while, which was pretty cool to rewatch all the old episodes, but this was taken over by Minecraft when we bought the big boys nintendo switch's with minecraft. I love minecraft so I support them playing it and learning about it. Surely it's leaps and bounds better than when I played Crash Bandicoot when I was their age!

     I'm glad to report that we have all grown so much in the last year as people, as individuals, as a family and as followers of  Jesus. There are so many other things that happened but perhaps a different time to tell those tales!

Kids and Questions.

    You know, I don't give my kids enough credit for how much they remember and understand. Today at church, which is the first time attending Sunday service at this new church, my oldest son (5yrs) had to sit with us through the main service. He attended Sunday school from 0900-1015ish and then the church policy is that all kindergarteners and up have to sit through the service. Which I think is great; it teaches them patience and reverence which is kind lost on some younger kids these days I feel with TV shows being on demand and YouTube being on every device. Anyways, he asked me what the communion packet was for, you know, the plastic cup of juice sealed with a little wafer sealed on top of that? Naturally I didn't have time to explain it to him and I certainly wasn't going to shortchange him an answer.

    I guess his question really got me to thinking about how it is my (and my wife's) responsibility to ensure he, and his two younger brothers, grows up learning the gospel story so he can one day make his own profession of faith. I emphasize that because my wife, when my son asked what it was, kind of looked at me and I think may have said something about getting a communion packet for my son, but I know that it wouldn't be right for my son to partake until he understood and accepted all that it meant. This evening, before bed while my wife was putting the 2yr old down, I took my two older boys to the living room and explained a very abbreviated gospel story to them. To which they already knew kind of because my 5-year old finished one of my sentences and then the younger one said "and then we will all go to heaven!", to which I was kind of awestruck for a second. The are only four and five but already kind of have a grasp of that stuff. I read them a part of a kids version of the bible for the better part of one to two years and it kind of seemed as if they didn't pay that much attention. In children's church at our last church I would often press them on the ride home about what they had learned that day and the usual response was either very generic or the whole "I don't know" thing. My assumptions about these answers and their seeming lack of attentiveness during bible story time were very wrong; I was very happy about this.

    It makes me very happy and I feel very satisfied knowing that they are really starting to grow up and know the gospel story in very broad strokes. I feel as if that's how it should be: a child grows up learning the general overview of the bible stories and the gospel and as you age you start to fill in the details. Day by day, one lesson, sermon, devotional or revelation at a time you fill in every last tiny shade of the whole until you die. Hopefully by then the canvas of your testimony and understanding of salvation is clear and accurate; something to be yearned for within the lifetime of all people. I must remind myself constantly that this is my calling and that the mastery of worldly craft and techniques are fleeting but that real devotion is found within they study of God's word and God's Grace. 

    Sometimes my kids act like turds but I love them to death and I am grateful and humbled that they can bring such thoughtfulness and revelation to me about things of God.