The beginning

I see so many people making these blogs that I thought I would try my hand at it. If nothing else it will serve as a good journal for me to remember my experiences. I know that there are many soldiers telling their story on blogspots. In fact one of my good chaplain friends has his own. I am not usually very good at writing consistently, hopefully this will help me to have some motivation to keep writing. I would really like to remember all of the things I am and will be up to over the next year or so.

Sorry, we haven't been properly introduced. My name is Chaplain Todd Luken. I serve in the Army as... You guessed it a chaplain. I am in the process of being deployed and I will be serving as Squadron Chaplain for some 600 soldiers for about a year.

I have been in train-up mode for about 2 months now. It is a long and tedious trial and error type of learning. There are several things that have to be accomplished during this time.
Mandatory "training" we like to call it "checking the box" in reality is going over the soldier skills we already know, but we have to prove to the army that we do in fact know it. I have two categories of mandatory training; Soldier skills and chaplain skills. Neither of them are very exciting, mostly because it is so repetitive.

Then there is the working together part the unit I am a part of is made of several different parts from many different states. This can sometimes prove difficult especially when higher leadership refuses to work together. All in all they seem to work together well. My job for this part is simply to get to know everyone. That can take awhile when we are talking literally hundreds of people. You have to be somewhat creative to even meet some people. I have done everything from visiting them during morning calisthenics, to pulling night guard duty with the Joes. This part of the training is the most rewarding for me, mostly because it requires a great deal of creativity. I think it is also the most demanding part of my job, but I know it will be the most important. If anyone here is going to trust me they first have to know who I am. Noone would want to come to someone with a problem if they had never met them before. So I trudge on trying different things to get to know people.

Today I tried a Squadron level party. It didn't go so well. Well I shouldn't say that so much, the people who came enjoyed it enough, it is just that not so many people came. Ah well, back to the drawing board as they say. Hey that would be a good idea...A drawing board. hmmmm. Anyway, I enjoy this part of my job, but I think it is the hardest for me. I am good at making friends, but I am not all that extroverted so I push myself.

I am getting kind of tired so I will leave it off here for now.

CH Luken