Little Things

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth mentioning again—the little things are the things that seem to make life liveable. Either in the omission or in the commission. I was going to start practicing the tuba today, so I went over to the Chaplain’s office to break it out and start playing—and we discovered there was no mouthpiece. It is a beautiful, antique style tuba (I’ve never seen valves like this, with floating valve caps, pretty cool, and with four valves, too, I’m guessing so you could change the key of the instrument, sort of like with a 4^th valve a Baritone becomes a Euphonium), but utterly useless without that mouthpiece. The Chaplain wondered if there was a metal lathe around here that someone could make a lathe on, but decided to just order one from the States. We should get it in about three weeks, and in the meantime, I’ll get started on an extra trumpet they have here. I found out that the Chaplain gets all these instruments from the Defense Reutilization Management Office (DRMO), basically the trash dump of the U.S. Government and DoD.

As I was eating chow this evening, I observed an officer bowing his head and thanking God for his food—and I realized that for the last few evenings I have forgotten to do the same. How could I forget something like that? With the establishment of a new routine, I guess, ‘someone’ out there is trying to disassociate me from my old routine, especially the parts of it that helped to tie me to God and a grateful attitude towards Him for his constant grace in my life. Just as God cares about me, so I’d like Him to know that I acknowledge His care of me. I’d also like to thank YOU for your prayer and support, which is surely directly tied to the many ways God is giving me the strength to carry on and even be blessed in the midst of this separation from the ones I love so much.

Semper Fi, Jon G.