No more rhymes, now I mean it! Anybody want a peanut?

Here we are entering our 6th month of the deployment. We are so grateful to the Lord for bringing us both safely this far. Paul has been staying busy at the Base Defense Operations Center, and this past month, he was given the opportunity to run weekly convoy missions. He will be doing this indefinitely until the end of the deployment. Below are a couple of pictures, one is a child who was running alongside the convoy asking for candy and food, the other is the most recent picture I have of Paul.

Lately, I've been up to a few things as well. In March and April, I taught a 6 week infant massage course in recognition of Month of the Military Child, and Child Abuse Awareness Month. The class made it into our local military newspaper the Schweinfurt Dispatch. You can check out the article at

http://www.schweinfurt.army.mil/sites/local/SchweinfurtDispatch16april09.pdf

A dream of mine, inspired by my Aunt Jane and her love and care of horses, has been to work with horses. I am thankful for the blessing of Seuter's Ranch about 15 minutes away from the base. They give English saddle riding lessons on Mondays evenings. In the lessons, the first and last 30-45 minutes are spent caring for the horse, brushing them down and cleaning out their hooves. I ride a horse named Ginger, she is very friendly and last week nuzzled me with her head after we were done trotting in the riding circle. Funny little story about my first lesson. I had decided to wear some old blue jeans to avoid ruining any of my good ones. These jeans were pretty old, and as I was getting up in the saddle the first time, they decided to rip! I wear stretchy pants now. :)

Thank you for all your prayers for Paul and me, they are greatly felt and appreciated!

Trophies

Well I've done it...I won second place in a racquetball tournament! This is a picture of me and my friend Courtney with our trophies. Trophies are funny things...all plastic-y and shiny. Here's the comical part. I competed in the women's division of the tournament and played against Courtney, with whom I play racquetball every Tuesday night. We had fun playing each other...it was all smiles for both of us during the span of our two games. You see, we knew we were guaranteed a trophy...we were the only two women in our division :) Hehe. It's still enjoyable to say I won second place in a racquetball tournament.

Paul news: in 10 days, Paul will have been gone for 4 months! Almost 1/3 of the deployment down. He's doing well...currently he and his platoon are moving offices. Very soon, Paul's office and room will be one. One of his jobs is to keep the helicopter landing area free from the hordes of birds that like to reside there. So once a week, he and another soldier go "dove hunting." If you know Paul, shooting guns is something to which he looks forward (although I don't know if the birds much like being a part of his sport :). Because they have a limited amount of shot gun shells useful for clearing out the birds, they have to ration the shells and are only able to shoot five shells per week. Paul usually takes a soldier who has little to no experience with a shot gun and gives them a good ole Smith family lesson (while wearing his Joel Smith Family made leather holster). The student gets three shells and Paul gets two (so the learning soldier has more opportunities to shoot). Paul is an excellent instructor at whatever he decides to teach. I love that guy!

On the Road Again

Helloooo friends and family! Here I am back in Germany. Last Friday I flew into Frankfurt and officially finished my first week back at work two days ago. I just returned last night from a Kay Arthur Precept training in Ansbach, Germany which was awesome! I loved being with my family for almost three weeks and am sad I did not have more time to spend visiting everyone I would have liked to visit, but I am also glad to be back in my home. Being over here feels closer to Paul...only a two hour time difference as opposed to 9 hour difference in Texas.

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind. I flew into San Antonio on the 26th and stayed with my parents for a couple of days, then my mom and I embarked on a road trip across Texas together. First we headed north to spend the weekend with Tris and Miss Liss. By Monday, mom and I were on our way over to Fort Worth to visit my maternal grandmother in the nursing home. We had a little pre-Valentine's day celebration with her, a special lunch and we made some heart picture frames together. My cousin Michelle and her two little boys were there and later we were able to see my Aunt Sharon. From there we stopped for lunch with my paternal grandparents in New Braunfels at the Clear Springs restauraunt where Grandpa Tom always get the "little buddy" plate :) Next I drove down to Corpus Christi for Lisa and Joseph's wedding. I was able to see Ryan and Dorothy and my niece Grace Isabella for the first time since she was born...I'm in love! She's the most beautiful baby in the world!

Paul was able to call from Iraq and talk to Lisa on her wedding day to wish his sister a happy wedding. The wedding was a fairytale and lots of friends and family were present. While in Corpus Christi, I drove out to the beach one morning where Paul proposed to me and recorded a sunrise on video to send to Paul so we could enjoy a sunrise together in our favorite spot on the beach.

I ended up back in San Antonio after the wedding and one day my momma and I drove up to Ikea where we ran into Jade and Wesely! Another day we went to the Rodeo and of course made a point to stop by the Army tent with Paul in mind :). Paul's update: he is staying busy and time is flying. He works about 16 hours a day and has recently had a family from in the states adopt him and his platoon. The kids in this family draw pictures and send them to the platoon along with small gifts for the soldiers. The internet continues to be unreliable and poses as a little bit of a barrier to our communication, but for the most part, we are able to at least email each other every couple of days if we can't talk. It's been almost three months since Paul left already, and it's taken about this long for the brigade to get set up on the FOB. As they are getting settled in, relationship problems are starting to become more prominent with spouses back home, please keep the soldiers and their marriages/families in your prayers. May this time apart from their families be a time that they are drawn to the Lord.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

The time has finally come! In 4 days I leave to fly back to the states for a 3 week stay. Mostly I am eagerly anticipating seeing family I haven't seen in almost a year. Lisa and Joseph are getting married and Ryan and Dorothy and Grace will be there...I will be giving her lots of hugs and kisses from me and Paul to catch her up on the last 9 months we've been apart. Speaking of Paul, time is flying for both of us...on Monday he will have been gone for 2 months! Ten more months to go, but not really because one of those months we'll get to see each other for 2 weeks...so it's more like we only have 9 months left. :)

I took some free snowboarding lessons this past weekend in hopes that when Paul returns we will be able to snowboard together. Here are some pictures from that weekend.

Paul, my little sneaky one, found a way to get me some beautiful flowers...I love him. :)

Paul is officially gone for a 12 month deployment to Iraq. He left the night before Thanksgiving day. We're very happy that a couple of weeks before he left, I had the honor of putting on his new 1st LT rank. Congrats to you Paul!

Here's an excerpt from an email I've sent out to family and friends:

Paul's doing good, just tonight I talked with him on the phone for about 20 minutes and he said his days are going by fast! Today was his first day to officially take lead on his responsibilities as the BDOC (base defense operations center) officer. He said all is going well. One of his prayer requests was that he is able to get 4-8 more guys added to his platoon because they seem to be spread thin between manning the towers, manning the front gate and coordinating safety check interactions with TCNs (third country nationals) and the nationals working on the FOB (forward operating base). Don't you just love the Army and it's ACRONYMS (capitalized letters that make the Army feel better about themselves). Hehe. A little FYI, the base where he is in Al Iskandyriah is called Kalsu, apparently named after a football player from Buffalo, NY who died fighting in Vietnam, because the first unit stationed at this FOB back in 2003 was from Buffalo, NY. Paul should be there until November of next year.

Paul's APO address is:

Smith, Paul, S

HHC 172nd Support Battalion

APO, AE 09312

Just wanted to let you know, I will be gone for the next 5 days down to Baumholder, Germany where I am getting certified in Infant Massage to be able to teach it to the moms I work with. Plus it gives me 52 continuing education units for my RN license! Yippee But you can always call me if you feel like it:

011 49 9721 646 9712

I do not remember if I told you this or not, but if you dial this number and I'm home, I usually answer and then call you right back, since we have set up a plan for free calls to the states from our home phone. Plus my skype username is heidi.smith.99 and Paul's skype username is paul.smith.99. As soon as Paul gets internet up and running in his CHU (containerized housing unit) he should be able to use skype video.

I can hardly believe I will get to see you all in about a month and a half. I'm flying into San Antonio on January 26th and staying with my parents for a couple of days; then the plan is for me to spend the weekend with Tris and Miss Liss, drive over to Dallas and visit Grandma Mills and the fam there, drive down to La Vernia to see my Grandparents and family there, and drive down to Corpus the Wednesday before the wedding; Debbie said she and Joel will be flying in on that Wednesday as well, so maybe Lisa and I can just drive to the airport on Wednesday and pick you all up! I'll stay in Corpus for a couple days after the wedding to visit family and friends there, then leave the Monday after Lisa's wedding back up to San Antone to stay with my parents for 3 days before I fly back to Germany on Thursday the 12th of February.

Thanks for taking the time to get all the way down here to the end of this long, run-on sentence of a novel :)

Love you much,

Heidi

The Sixth Month Mark

We've officially been out of the states for six months now. This is the longest I've ever been away from my family in my whole life. Speaking of the length of my life...I am now a quarter of a century old...I like saying that...it makes me feel well seasoned in life. :) Paul and I are the same age until September 16th when he celebrates his 26th b-day.

Paul's coming home tomorrow!!!!! I'm so so SO excited to see him. It's been almost 2 months to the day since he left for his field training. These past two months of separation have been a time of growth and practice for us. What do I do when I get in a fender bender and my husband is not around? What do I do when I need to change a light bulb out of reach, or the computer goes kaput, or I need to find a solution to squeaky brakes or a leak in the car? What happens when I'm unable to talk with Paul for a week or more? All of these questions are important; it's necessary to prepare, especially for a time when my husband will be gone for a whole year; but to have these thoughts crowding up my brain, running around up there like little foxes trying to ruin the vineyard (Song of Solomon 2:15), this is not right. The resounding answer to all of my foxes has been to shoo them away with TRUST. I cannot boast in tomorrow, the future is unknown to myself, and I long to be able to fully rely on God...to responsibly, and joyfully value the present (Jeremiah 10:23, Psalm 142:3).

On a joyful note, last weekend, I went to Austria with my friend Missy to go white water rafting, canyoning, and hiking. :) We had such an adventurous time and conquered some of our fears of jumping off high rocks and splashing through freezing water (wetsuits were helpful for that).

The Fender Bender

I will just put this right out there: I was at fault in this fender bender

I was on a main road that had been detoured to a teeny road because of a local fest, and the cars were packed up on either side of me, I was thinking I had narrowly missed scrapping this one parked car when I actually heard a scrape...ew...not good. So instead of stopping and causing a major back up on the detour road that was already jam packed, I thought I would drive up to a clear spot where I could pull over, park and walk back...well…thirty minutes later...when I returned after going on a little Heidi detour, the car was gone. So I went into the store the car had been parked in front of, I attempted to communicate with the older German woman who spoke no english and finally we just decided to call the polizei...everything worked out with them, they took down my info and told me they had received no reports and would call me if anyone reported it. Then the military police showed up and said they would have to charge me with a hit and run...but thankfully we got that worked out and I wasn't charged with a hit and run. In the middle of all this, I called Paul crying and asking him what in the world I'm supposed to do in a foreign country fender-bender, and of course he was very calm and patient and compassionate towards me even when I was crying and telling him how badly I needed him here with me. Later I called him back and apologized for being inconsiderate of his circumstances and thanked him for his loving help.

So if my lesson in trusting the Lord was a pass or fail, I'd have to say I failed; but I hope to never walk out of a situation like the one above without having a growth spurt. Some of the things I learned from this incident were, no amount of crying or asking 'why' makes the problem go away...this can actually make things more difficult and take longer. So next time I'm in a fender bender on a crowded street in front of a shop, I've got to stay calm, stop the car and trust. :) Sounds so easy...Lord give me the strength to trust.

Psalm 73:26 My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever