2 Corinthians 8: 16-17 “How we thank God for making Titus as eager as we are to help you!  Not only did he welcome our request; he was so eager to help that of his own free will he decided to go to you.”

(This reminded me that Chris was eager to go help the Iraqi people in the same way as Titus.)

Good Blessed Morning,

As you can see, I’ve fallen far behind on Chris’s updates. He actually deployed on September 29. We didn’t hear from him until October 3. Our first call was at 2:12 A.M., the point in the night where I am most incoherent. I’m a night owl, but by this time I’ve been asleep only about an hour. When he called it was 10:12 A.M. in Fallujah. He called collect on this one as there had been no time for him to get a phone card. I’m not entirely certain how much a collect call from Fallujah will be…it should prove entertaining. They are 8 hours ahead of us, that I can securely state. It was 100 degrees Fahrenheit when he landed in the C130. They hadn’t yet made it to their camp (which turned out to be Camp Baharia, an old pleasure palace of Ouday Hussein).

Once they got to camp they were put into tents. Thankfully, these are now air- conditioned. They were taking classes in Arabic (and still are for all I know). He saw Jeff Brown, a bud from his last deployment, as many of you will remember. Jeff is now Corporal Brown! Congratulations, Jeff! Chris styled himself as “convoy boy”. Obviously they’ll be figuring overwhelmingly in his future.

Chris is begging our pastor, Father Hai, to send him homilies. I’m not sure if Father is able to do that, or not. He was actually hoping to have them put onto his “My Space”, or to have them e-mailed. He had various messages to send out: “Hugs & kisses to all family; Tell the Blue Star Mothers that I’m getting sexier with an irresistible tan; I’m wearing Uncle Jay’s rosary around my neck with my scapular. Most importantly, how are Miss Laura, Lauren, and Izzie doing?”

The next time we heard from him was Friday, October 5, when he had me type up the letter to our church family. He wanted Donna Stroh to know that he wears his 91^st Psalm bandana on every convoy. It’s a real comfort to know he has God’s protection. He had a quote that I think I’d like to borrow: “I might not like my job sometimes, but I still do it.” I guess that I could just as easily apply that to anything in my life.

He has spent a good deal of time in what they term the “Chaldean” part of Fallujah. That is the Christian sector of the city. There are many more Christians living in Iraq than we ever knew about. Saddam persecuted them; he also invited Al Quaeda in to help do the same. When we think of Christianity side by side with Islam, we are told that the Christians hate the Muslims. However, the Christians are respectful of Islam. During the Islamic holy month of Ramadan the Christians observe the same traditions. They spend Ramadan with prayer and fasting.

He called again the morning of October 6 (it was early, but not too early). He had been told that he’d stay at the guard position for a month and then be off doing “other things”. Of course, that’s the weekend where he was switched back to Lima Company for a couple days. He did mention that there was a spa over where he took the phone. I remember how bad Camp Mercury was last time. This sounds almost like a resort in comparison. Although he’s been moved back to guard, he’s still at Camp Baharia.