The Al Asad Group

The base has a pretty nice chapel building with nice pews, stained glass windows and everything. But we don’t meet there. Jews and Mormons meet in the chapel annex building in the back.



Church at Al Asad works exactly the way church is supposed to work: two optional one-hour meetings. The first is at 1:00 and the next is at 8:00 in the evening. We generally get about 20 people for the afternoon session and 10-15 for the evening one, with very little overlap. Each meeting is structured like a sacrament meeting all the way up until after sacrament, when we turn to lessons instead of talks. During one of the sessions we do the SS lesson and during the other we do the Priesthood/RS lesson. Sometimes we’ll just watch General Conference talks.

We’re a Group – the smaller form of a Branch – of the Manama Bahrain Stake. We have a Stake Representative for Anbar Province at another base and a Senior Stake Representative in Baghdad. All of the group leadership was leaving as I arrived and a new Group Leader was called. I was called as an Assistant Group Leader. We’re trying to get a second called right now. We have a few people called as Instructors, but we’re trying to get a total of six so that everyone just teaches one session once a month. The problem is that there’s so much movement, it’s hard to find people who aren’t leaving in a couple of months. I suddenly feel sorry for the Bishoprics of all my Single’s Wards.

A few odds and ends about the group:

-Two meetings can mess with our institutionalized language. During a closing prayer at the afternoon session someone said, “and please bless that those who could not make it this week will be able to attend next week . . . or this evening.”

-We wear uniforms to church, as we do everywhere, but we don’t really recognize rank, which is a little jarring. I still remember walking into church for the first time and a Lt Col comes up and shakes my hand and says, “Hi, I’m Brother B–.”

-We also bring weapons to church, as we do everywhere. There’s a rifle rack on the wall for people who have rifles, but those of us with pistols just keep them on us. It was a little strange at first blessing the sacrament while armed.

-The Jews meet in a room right next to us. They have a sign by their door that says, “Congregation Brothers of Israel.” I am tempted, almost above that which I can bear, to put a sign by our door that says, “Congregation Elders of Israel.”

Happy Halloween

Someone got confused when decorating the chow hall for Easter.



But they made up for it with these cakes.



All of this was in the chow hall that is closest to me, but on Sunday evening I made it down to the big chow hall which is down the ways a bit. I wish I had my camera with me. It was ridiculous. I’ve seen little Easter villages in malls in recent years, but nothing that compares to this. There must have been about 20 large decoration pieces in this Easter village in the middle of the chow hall. My favorite was a 4-foot angry looking rabbit that was pulling a green handcart full of giant eggs.

The funny thing is that no one knows, nor can even figure out, the reasoning behind it all. There are certainly no kids here. And I really don’t think there were very many that even appreciate it. It seemed to be largely ignored when I was there – except when Marines would first see it. They’d pause, take it all in for a moment, and then say, “What the **** is that?”

A Conference Miracle!

I couldn't access the internet where we meet for church, so I couldn't manage to air an audio stream of General Conference for church like I wanted to. We initially planned to do testimony meeting as usual, but at the last minute we discovered that audio files of talks are downloadable from the church website not long after they actually speak. A member brought in the files which I copied onto my laptop and hooked up to our boombox. For the afternoon session of church we listened to the first half of the Saturday Morning session and during the evening session we listened to the rest of it. People seemed to appreciate it, but I think really they were just glad they didn't have to bear their testimonies again.

Nothing special for church tomorrow except that we assigned people to give lessons on the resurrection instead of whatever. So I guess that's special. One guy we assigned to give the lesson only came for the first time last week. I hope he shows up tomorrow because I really have no idea who he is.

Highway Robbery

I went to get my haircut yesterday from the Turks or whoever they are – Indians maybe, I’ve never asked. They could be Iraqis, but their language doesn’t sound like Arabic to me. Anyway, I was astonished to discover that prices had gone up from $3.50 to $4.00. I assumed at first that it must be some April Fools joke, but no, they wanted four big ones for a hair cut. They keep this up and I’m going to start shaving my head.