Back in Houston!
Brian invited me back to his dad's home in Houston for this, our four day weekend! It's so nice to be out of the barracks for a prolonged period of time, and the McWhirter house rocks. I'm looking forward to going to the Lutheran church we attended last Sunday, and hopefully I'll get to hang out with Keilah today or tomorrow.
I passed my second-to-last validation for the medic course; praise the Lord! I had to complete 6 stations: (1) apply a tourniquet, (2) apply an improvised tourniquet or pressure dressing bandage, (3) initiate IV infusion or IO infusion (stick a needle into the bone marrow of the sternum), (4) establish a cricothyrotomy (cut a hole in the throat and install a breathing tube), (5) install a King LT (oral breathing tube) or Combitube (another oral breathing tube), (6) needle decompress (puncture a lung to relieve pressure), or apply an occlusive dressing (a dressing over the lung field that allows air to escape). Of the stations where it was either one skill or the other, I got all the skills I didn't want, with which I am least comfortable. I wanted improvised tourniquet instead of pressure dressing, IO instead of IV, King LT instead of Combitube, and occlusive dressing over needle decompression, but I was tested on all of the latter. This was great, because I passed all the skills my first-time anyway, and have more confidence concerning them now.
I got to talk to James Murphy on the phone for about 3 hours the other night, which was long, long overdue. That man is among the most real people I've ever met. He lives near the Everglades, so I'll be somewhat nearby, while stationed at Ft. Stewart, Georgia. We caught up on our life situations and spoke of old friends, the military, and Christian sexuality. I was relieved to be joined in my openness to traditionally shunned Christian sexual expression by a fellow, deeply devoted Christian. James is married and he doesn't have any desire to step outside of monogamy at this point, but he too feels that we, the Christian community, as we know it, have been unnecessarily rigid concerning the context and expression of romance, and have not necessarily been faithful to the Biblical prescription.
I hope everyone is doing well! The Bush era is almost over... praise the Lord!
His Peace,
Jake