Gone Fishin!

Back in the 80's there was a great Army commercial that showed all these high speed Army guys jumping out of a C-130, landing gathering up chutes, and having coffee afterwards. The tag line was,"we do more before 9 am than most people do all day!" The commercial ended with some bubba saying, "Good morning 1st SGT!" Well, my new 1st SGT has taken that to a new level. He likes to get up every morning at 3 a.m. This morning he told me that he did more before 5 a.m. than most people did all day. And I believe him. I'm writing to you all from lovely FT Dix New Jersey. Its not really that lovely. It has been cold and wet and then it gets wet and cold. Luckily we have been issued some really good wet weather gear. As you can see from the photo that body armor is required for all training. It weighs about 40lbs. And a ruck sack and you are toting from 40-70 lbs and that is without ammo, because as a Chaplain I don't carry that. Will, our battalion XO hates the b...

The HOS fellas head to God's Country Outfitters in Albemarle, NC and meet up with Virginia State Turkey Calling Champion, Ricky Higgins. Shortly after our interview, Ricky walked away the winner of yet another calling contest - listen and you'll even get to hear one of the calls that helped him win the championship. ALSO - this will be the last podcast for Chaplain Brad as he will be heading to serve our country over in Iraq next week. God Bless Brad and God bless America! Listen!

Publish Post Last Saturday my son, Jack, and all his buddies from church participated in the AWANA Olympics. AWANA is a church program that incorporates games and Scripture memory. Jack loves the games! Jack is a big bruising kid so he doesn't get the speed events, but he does get the strength events. He slapped his gloves on and off he went. The goal is to pull the rope and get hold of a bean bag laying on the ground. Its called the 4 way tug, but in this case it was the 3 way tug. They didn't win, but that didn't matter! I love yelling for him when he is competing. Being a father is a great job. Even when he doesn't win I'm proud, proud that he competes and that he is great little guy. I was praying for my children this morning and facing a year away from them, it got very emotional. God spoke very clearly to me though. As the pain of missing events like this swept over me, the missed time, the instruction in life that I'll miss with Jack and Tori, God spoke. ...

I had an opportunity to give a class on suicide awareness and intervention last night to a Celebrate Recovery class at a church nearby. It was a group of about 20 people. The group was diverse both in race and gender. There were old and young alike. Celebrate recovery applies the 12 step recovery process but is specifically Christ centered. It has brought hope to literally thousands of people around the world. In this little group I met two people that really struck me. During my workshop I deal with what you should do when a person is dangerously close to suicide and has a weapon. I talk about removing the weapon from the person. As I was doing this portion I noticed this lady break down and sob. I obviously knew that this had touched a chord with her and apologized publicly for opening an old wound for her. She came up to me after the lesson was over and shared with me why she became so emotional. It seems that 14 years ago her daughter had a friend who was suicidal and had a gun in ...

All the fellas at the 35th annual Southeastern Treeing Walker Days (That's coon hunting for those that don't know) festival at the Rowan County Fairgrounds. Listen now!