Ten Months In

It has been 9 months since Lisa left for Recruit Training. After 13 weeks of basic training, 4 weeks of combat training and several months of mechanics school, Lisa arrived at her permanent duty station in Twentynine Palms, California.

Many of the friends that Lisa has made along the way reached their duty stations about the same time. Now several of those are being deployed to Afghanistan.

Before going to Recruit Training at Paris Island, Cheryl met Jordan's mom, Tammy, online at one of the message boards for recruit parents. Jordan entered a couple months before Lisa arrived and they eventually wrote back and forth. Jordan was an encouragement to Lisa. Being 8 weeks ahead she was able to prepare Lisa with her first hand experience about what was ahead in the coming weeks. You may not know this but the Marines are very old school when it comes to training their recruits. There is no communication with the outside world other then good old fashioned, handwritten,snail-mail. No phone calls, no computers, internet or email. Not even any discussion outside the platoons that are going through together is allowed. It seemed to me it must have been odd that Lisa and Jordan would occasionally see each other on base during the month they were both there together but were not allowed to talk or even acknowledge each other. Only the letters that they sent back and forth. Now that they are at permanent stations they can call and text each other.

During Lisa's training period in North Carolina Jordan and her mother Tammy were nice enough to drive over to Lisa's base and pick her up for a day of shopping with them. That is them taking a break.

Originally scheduled to be deployed with her unit to Afghanistan at the end of this month, Jordan received 4 days notice that her deployment was moved up. After traveling via a stop in Europe, Jordan was able to let Lisa know that she had arrived in Afghanistan a few days ago. Tammy's husband Rich deployed to Afghanistan several months ago so she now has both her husband and daughter overseas.

If you say a prayer for Lisa and the rest of our troops, please include this family as well.