Dear Colleagues, Friends, and Family,
Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! I am very pleased to announce that on June 27, 2009, after nearly 24 years of service to God and Country as a Military Chaplain, I will be retiring with an Honorable Discharge.
Nearly 10 years were spent on Active Duty. Currently, I am returning from a tour of duty where I have served for over two years at Fort Dix, NJ, and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. At Fort Dix, I initiated and pastored Joint Military, Joint National, Interdenominational Worship Services attended by airmen, sailors, soldiers, and British Army soldiers. A British Royal Army Anglican Chaplain and a Syrian Orthodox Chaplain officiated with me. Our U.S. personnel were deploying and returning from the Middle East. The British soldiers were training at McGuire AFB parachuting from C-17 planes while living at Fort Dix.
One of the interesting things that happened was that one of my Soldiers came to my office and received the baptism with the Holy Spirit. He came to tell me he was recently saved. For about an hour I shared what it meant to be filled with the Spirit and how praying in the Spirit would release the Spirit to flow as rivers of living waters according to John 7:38. He wanted this. So I laid hands on him and he received a glorious infilling of the Spirit and began speaking in tongues. There was no need to tarry because he had already received the Holy Spirit at salvation according to Romans 8:9 which says, “Now if any man does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not one of his.” Once becoming saved it’s a matter of manifesting the Holy Spirit as rivers of living waters. This I have preached to my troops for nearly 24 years.
As I reminisce on my many great assignment, what stands out the most was serving in 2006 as the first full time chaplain in history for the ROTC Leader’s Training Course in the Eastern Region Cadet Command at Fort Knox, KY. One this tour I served on the Leadership Panel, implemented metrics to gauge the quality of chaplain leadership, charted the results on graphs for the Battle Update Briefings, was usually found in the field with the ROTC Cadets, earned the Army Physical Fitness Training Excellence Award with a perfect score of 300, established a strong preaching and counseling ministry, and was commissioned to write the official Leader’s Training Course Prayer. There were many nights with little sleep. It was officially stated that I had set the standard by which all future Leader’s Training Course Chaplains would be measured. But this is to the glory of God. As the Word says, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13, NIV). I stand as a witness to this in all my assignments and endeavors to which God has called me to accomplish.