Dear Jen, Received 11 February 2011

Dear Jen,

"To those of you who are not yet to the season of life when you might serve a couples mission, I urge you to prepare now for the day when you and your spouse might do so.  As your circumstances allow, as you are eligible of retirement, and as your health permits, make yourselves available to leave home and give full-time missionary service.  There are few times in your lives when you will enjoy the sweet spirit and satisfaction that come from giving full-time service together in the work of the Master."

This quote from President Monson's Saturday morning opening remarks has been on my mind a lot this past week.  When I read it I think of what our priorities are and first and foremost I think of raising Eric and Rubie to be strong and valiant in the gospel.  That they are well prepared to serve and contribute in their adult lives.  However, once they're gone what of you and me?  President Monson lays it out, we need to be building for missionary service, I envision us serving many missions over many years together.  And the next 25 years are to prepare physically and spiritually for that service. I remember a time when I was in El Salvador and my fantasy was to be with you.  Being away has reminded me that it is still my fantasy and now I have a clearer vision of what the future phases of our time together will be like..as President Monson describes.  I love you so much. 

Today was brutal!  The toughest part of BCT has been staying awake in all-day classes.  They have been ramping up the PT very slowly, which has been a disappointment.  Combined with eating poorly I'm not seeing the physical progress I had hoped for.  On Saturday we went through the gas chamber.  That is an experience I hope to never have again, ever!  They did a pretty good job preparing us for the affects, the one aspect I wasn't prepared for was the complete inability to breathe, it was a pretty freaky experience.

We were able to go to church on Sunday.  I about cried when we walked in and they had a video playing of the Music and the Spoken Word, hearing the choir was awesome.  I saw a number of soldiers from the RSP.  I also saw Brother Snyder.  He seems to be doing well.

I received your letter yesterday, which was extremely helpful.  I'm glad to hear you enjoyed your St. George trip and that you did so well with the 1/2 marathon.  I'm also happy to hear about so many people taking care of you.  You and the kids are in my prayers daily.  I am totally dependent on the Lord to look after my family.  I wish I had long blocks of time to write, however, I am often interrupted mid-sentence.  If my writing is disjointed that is why.

We had another very long day in the classroom.  Last night I had CQ duty which is to say that I spent two hours cleaning the offices.  I had been pretty good at staying awake but today I did actually fall asleep.  Tomorrow we have some more and then we take a test which is required for graduation.  I know earlier in this letter I wrote about them not pushing us physically and ironically enough in the time since I wrote that we've been "smoked" more than in all the time we've been at basic.  I'll write more tomorrow and then I'll put this in the mail.  Good night for now, I love you.

Today we took the "Combat Life Save" (CLS) test and I passed!  Yeah!! This is required to graduate from BCT. They had 58 people fail which had a lot of us quite concerned.  You know me I was in the back of the room crunching some numbers; the company average fail rate was 14% (58/290) and our platoon fail rate was 8% (4/52), which of course the whole time I'm thinking..."I wish I could get some additional data to better understand why those who failed failed?  why did 1st platoon perform better than the others?"

My ops-minded thinking has be doing that a lot around here.  one of the toughest aspects to deal with is time management.  That is that they control 100% of your time to the highest degree.  For example: they march us to the Dinning Facility (DFAC) for chow we line up in Parade Rest (arms behind our backs, eyes/head straight forward).  Once at the serving line we hold our trays directly in front of us, side stepping and can only ask in very few words for food which is given in very specific portions.  Once we sit down to eat we can't speak to one another, we can't look around.  We have 10 minutes or less to eat and we have to get outside.  When we get our drinks we have to hold one hand over the glass (to prevent spills).  Anyhow, as extreme as this sounds the entire day is managed similarly.  My Battle Buddy (PV2 Christensen) is great, he was in ROTC and is a good kid.  He and I are two of the best about "lock'n it up" whch means we stand, sit, or whatever is expected with our mouths shut.  We speak very little.  i don't know much about him because of this but I know I am very grateful to have been assigned someone that a)gets it and b) cares.  He did tell me that part of his motivation for enlisting was to get discipline/direction in his life.  In Jr. High and high school he was a straight A student.  Once he got to college and had new-found liberty he started drinking a lot.  He decided that drinking wasn't going to get him where he wanted to be so he enlisted.  I have a lot of respect for him.  As I said he's a good kid.  He keeps me on time for everything (usually 10 minutes early).  Slowly the rest of the platoon is getting to know each other.  Last night we had a smoke session from Drill Sergeant Wells (the senior DS for our platoon).  Every time he called us to the position of Attention he made us say:

More PT DS, more PT
We like it, we love it, we want some more of it,
Make it hurt, DS, make it hurt.
Make it hurt, DS, make it hurt.
Smoke me!

Then he would give us a new exercise to do.  At the end of every movement though you have to be called back to the position of Attention which creates a perpetual loop.  Most of us loved it.

I know my writing is all over the place, I hope you'll understand how fragmented my time to write is.  Also it is hard to know what you'll be interested in and what you won't.

I wish I could adequately express to you what I feel in my heart for you and our children.  Today one of the "briefings" (military term for a class) was on sexually transmitted infections (STIs).  Everyone including the instructor laughed at abstinence as an option for prevention.  It made me think about how you and I don't even have to worry about such things because we'll only ever be together with each other.  I also thought of how much we are in love and we've chosen to be married forever and not just a one-night stand, that seems so special to me.  I wish everyone else in that room could experience a love such as ours.

Tell Eric that I really like the picture he drew for me.  I've hung it up in my wall locker along with some of the photos from Costco.

Tonight we leaned how to take our M16's apart and reassemble them.  Tomorrow we start classes on how to shoot, aim, etc.  Basic rifle Marksmanship is the next major component we have to pass to graduate BCT.  I think we'll begin shooting next week.  That should be fun.

I know I've said it a lot...I miss and love you.  I pray for you daily.  I hope all is going well for you.

Love,

Scott.