My war wounds!

As you can see from these pictures, I have been shot in the arm! I has been hurting pretty bad, but I think it is getting better.


Of course the the part that may get left out in the future as I tell the story, is that the "shot" came from a Smallpox vaccine, and I guess it is suppose to look like this. It will leave a nice scar so my future story of being shot in Baghdad will appear to be true! I guess I could have left the vaccine part out now and people would think I really got shot, but I have to tell the real story at least once I guess.

Sacrament in the Holy Land....sordof.

I went to church for the first time today in a few weeks. It is a pretty small branch here. There were 7 of us today, 6 from my home squadron. The other guy is from Alabama or something, and I guess for the last couple week has been the only one to show up for church. We figure if everyone that we know of shows up for church each week we should have about 15. Either way that is pretty small.
Today we sang opening and closing hymns as well as the sacrament hymn, plus a short talk by the guy who has been here longer. Church currently starts about shift change, so we are going to change it a little so more people can come, and it will last about an hour, have all of the above plus a short priesthood lesson.

Now that we have to boring details out of the way, read on for some more boring details...

Obviously the title of this blog is not exactly accurate, as I am in Baghdad not Jerusalem. But we are close, and although I am by no means a biblical scholar, I have heard that many of the things we read about in the bible actually happened here in Iraq, such as Daniel in the lions dens. I am interested to actually doing some research and learning more about the ancient history here.

Anyway church was really good, and even though it was short and not many people were there, the spirit was really strong.

The clean dirt of Baghdad.

So in case you don't know, I am currently deployed to Baghdad with the Air Force. I am currently sitting in the Cargo office of the Aerial Port where I work. The building is vibrating as a couple helicopters are getting ready to take off just outside. This is all common here. Also common is sand. If you don't like sand, don't come to Bagdad. It is night like nice sandy beach sand though, more like dust storm desert sand. It is spring here like it is in much of the world. However here that means dust storms, which ground aircraft due to low visibility much like the winter fog does at home. Of course that means everything is dusty, but it is okay because it is clean dust. Something can be covered in dust (and everything is) and it is still clean. It is only dirty if it has so much dust you can't tell what use to be under it, then you clean.
Other than that though all is well in Iraq. The hot days and cool nights are not too bad. I guess in July and August when we are suppose to have Hot nights and way hot days is when we have to worry.
I can't think of anything else to write about right now, and I don't like my co-workers MacBook I am using to type this, so I will end for now. Hope all is well with everyone back in the cold USA.

No rank in the Gospel

I had the opportunity to go to church on base today since I was down there for UTA. They have it every Sunday of UTA. It is only a half hour and you just sing a couple hymns, partake of the Sacrament and in the case of today have a short time for testimonies since it was the first Sunday of the month.
In months past I have never been able to go since with newcomers and other things we always had stuff scheduled during that time. But today was different so we went.
Even though there are probably hundreds of members of the church down there for UTA weekends I guess other people have conflicts or just decide not to come because there was only about 15 of us there today.
It was a very spiritual meeting even though it was short. The one thing that I really was impressed with was the fact that although about half the people there were pretty high ranking officers, we were all equals for that one half hour. No one out ranked anyone else. Although it is probably good to respect authority, especially in the Military, I think it is nice to remember that we are all brothers and sisters and equal in the eyes of the Lord. I think it will especially help keep thinks in perspective for those in authority.
At least that is what I think.