This week has been an exhausting week physically, and yet a rewarding week mentally and spiritually. To start - muscle failure days are legit! There is no shortage of sweating, grunting, and negotiating with your body and the pain it is enduring on these days. I have done exercises that I have never seen before. Let's just say I did not know my body could stretch like that! Or hurt like that!
We also spent 2 full days in the field doing land navigation at day & night, along with the 5 second dash, high and low crawling in the sand pit; plus running and diving behind barriers as we navigated a course designed to simulate combat situations where the chaplain assistance guides the chaplain safely from point to point; and to top it all off - the night infiltration course where we crawled 88 meters through the sand over logs & other obstacles, and under sections of razor wire while they fired machine guns overheard - sweet niblets that was fun. But let me honest, I am not 18, and that is the average age of the person going through this course, so 21 years on the other side of 18 I feel blessed to physically be able to navigate these courses. Let me not kid myself though - at the end each of these nights, I was flat out wore out - spent - nothing left in the gas tank.
I am thankful for the friends I have made here a Ch-BOLC, but I am also sad because 50% of our class will be leaving in the next 3 weeks. We have come together so well, and so to see them leave is sad. The word is that our class is going to grow in the next 3 weeks, b/c as those 50% leave, we will inherit new chaplains/chaplain candidates who will pick up where they left off in previous Ch-BOLC classes. Good luck to all who will be leaving and to all who will be joining us!
3 weeks are in the book - done - finished! Hooah! I am loving this training. I miss my family, but I know I am where God wants me to be - a missionary to our soldiers as I continue to serve in the local church also. Once again, I continue to covet your prayers! Please keep in touch through e-mail only at srevjds@gmail.com or joseph.d.sherwin@us.army.mil.
A Fellow Pilgrim.
Oh, did I fail to mention that we did all this with our full body armor on, other than in the land navigation phase. Definitely gives us a greater respect for our soldiers who are doing this daily in Iraq and Afghanistan. May God protect them and bring them home soon! And CNN filmed us during most of this.
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