West Cocoa Chat

We've been praying for one of our brothers that is going through Army Basic Training. Josh sent me a letter the other day giving me a description of how hard "BT" was. He wrote, "Climbing Mt. Tweeto (the 13,700ft peak we climbed in Colorado a couple of years ago) was a cakewalk compared to what I'm going through now."

Josh has asked for letters but he has also asked that those of us at church follow his instructions to the (no pun intended) letter. It seems that if one doesn't follow "envelope" directions (no fru-fru colors, not putting a "1" with a circle around it on the flap, ect) Josh's Drill Sargent like the famous R. Lee Emery of the History Channel's "Mail Call" show, will tell him, "Drop and give me 25 pushups maggot!"

I was sharing this letter with the brothers at our Men's Bible Study when one of the men shared his "Mail Call experience" when he was going through BT. It seems that he had a girlfriend who lived in San (can you see this coming?) Francisco. She was good about writing him and would send him 3 to 4 letters a week.

The trouble was that he started dreading these letters because when his platoon gathered for Mail Call, his Drill Sargent would see the San Francisco address and yell out, "Hey, (name changed to protect the innocent) Smith's homo boyfriend from San Francisco just sent him another letter!" As I listened to his story and read Josh's letter I have to say, those of you who have served in the military are special people who deserve our respect and all the plain white envelopes we can find!