Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Baghdad Iraq! It's currently about 6 in the evening Christmas day here. Today we had some steady rain that dampened spirits a bit.

My unit had a Christmas Eve party yesturday evening. Since I'm the unit's only cook currently in the area I got the happy job of barbacuing about a 100 lbs of assorted animals. We had jumbo hot-dogs, hamburgers, ribs, chicken breast and whole chickens that we grilled up. Things started with a strikkle at about 3:30 in the afternoon. People started showing up and munching on the chips, cookies and snacks that were laid out. At about 4:30 the brickets were nice and white and ready to get cookin'. Unfortunately, I was just handed these items when it was time to cook them. And wasn't given any chance to prepare in advance. So everything is like frozen solid. You don't want to be cooking meat that's frozen solid. But I didn't have much of a choice. We had a small microwave that wasn't going to be able to be of much help. We didn't have any sinks to run hot water of it for any length of time, nor did we have very much the time. I was afraid if we didn't get something ready quick that our hungry troops might wanna take a bit out of me. So once the brickets were ready I decided to put some hot dogs and hamburgers on cause I could make a large quanity of those pretty quickly. I opened the 18-pack of ultrajumbo hotdogs and found them to be encased in a block of ice. So ran to the microwave and did what I could to defrost them. So I popped those on one of the grills and them put some ribs and steaks on the other grill. At about 6:30 people were getting kind of full and we played games and mingled until about 7:30. Then came time for the gift exchange. All the gifts were passed out and then we went around the room and opened them individually and showed everyone what we had gotten. There's a really funny story here. If you get a chance ask me to tell it to you. My secret Santa got me book on learning arabic and a Koran. I tell you the Koran was at the top of my christmas list. Wow how'd they know?

Christmas morning I got up early as normal at about 4am. Then I headed over to the MCI phone trailer what was offering free calls for the holidays. And I made some holiday calls till about 7 then headed to breakfast. The Dinning Facility I normally go to was closed in preparation for the christmas lunch and dinner. So I hiked over to one of my other favorites and halfway through the meal they evacuated the place and searched the place and personal presumably for any threats. Security has really been taken up a couple of knotches since that suicide bomber struck up north in Mosul. I have to admit as I sat in the Dinning facility at the Christmas lunch celebration I did briefly feel a sense of vulnerability and insecurity. I thought it's be a great target to strike a crowed Dinning Facility as soldiers celebrate Christmas. But I didn't let myself dwell on that. I just reminded myself of the extensive security checkes that I had to pass through to get in and all the extra measures that they were taking.

In addition to being Christmas it was also the Sabbath today. This is now the forth week of holding a Sabbath Morning SDA service. We had five in attendence this morning up from our average of three. That shows that the word is getting out and some of the SDA's are coming out of the woodwork. Chaplain Cuzzins leads out and he and I are becoming fast friends. We've spent a number of afternoons talking and fellowshiping together, it's been great to get to know him.

There are many exciting developments with my unit here. We are winding down our deployment. Our replacements are here, they arrived on thursday. And this week we'll teach them the ropes and get them connected with our contacts around the area. I'll post a few more updates this week and give some more details.

I gotta fly. Merry Christmas!