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
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!
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!
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.
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.
