Day Thirty Three

Well, with it being Friday, I got to sleep in today...again. It was exactly what I needed, as I was starting to get very frustrated as the week went on this week, and woke up feeling pretty refreshed and motivated again.

I went in to the office, where I began working on developing a Master Training Plan for the ANA guys much like the one I developed for my own Airmen at home in Illinois. I thought a lot about things as I laid in bed frustrated last night, and the one thing that kept popping into my head was that I needed to be more proactive in training these guys. I think I've been too laid back and I've been letting them dictate to me when and if training was going to take place every day that I've been over there so far. I decided that things need to change. It started with this Master Training Plan. Every day that I've been over to the ANA PA office, I've not really had a plan on what to train them on. I've said I'll train them on "shooting" or "editing" or "basic shot techniques," but I've never really gotten myself into specifics, which I think has allowed them to kind of get me off track. With this training plan I've developed, it spells out exactly what is to be learned, how it is to be learned, and how long it should take. I mirrored their plan with the Air Force's version of the Master Training List, but obviously had to take out things that don't apply to the Afghans. Obviously, the U.S. Department of Defense policy on ethics and archiving guidelines don't apply here. As well, many of the references we use for those things and others don't apply. All in all, I widdled down our three hundred plus task list down to just over two hundred tasks. That should be a good start. I'm back on track...watch out!

I received a box in the mail yesterday. Now this is something pretty amazing. My old boss, Rich Kaminsky, told me about a woman who had taken great care of him during his deployment a year or so ago. Rich hooked me up with Karolle via Facebook, where I talked to her a couple times about various things. Now Karolle is a loyal follower of my blog, and has asked me if it was ok for her to share some of my experiences with her church in their weekly newsletter. Of course I obliged...and Karolle, I hope you'll share this part with them as well. Karolle has been sending care packages to deployed troops for some time now, and lucky for me, I'm now one of those people. I couldn't help but get a little emotional as I went through the box (the sight of the Butterfingers alone made me cry), and it's even a little emotional for me now just thinking about it. In front of me right now are letters and cards and drawings; a beautifully colored drawing from James (make sure he sees this photo!)...a paper with cut-out hearts and decorations with comments such as: "Thank you!! You are our heroes! God Bless you! Helen" and "Thank you for your sacrifice! Come home safe to us! Bless you! Dottie." You see those things all the time, but when they're written directly to you, it really hits home. A nice, hand-written letter - with "Dear Dave" at the top - from Shirley Allsman also came in the box. Shirley is a retired junior high school secretary, who absolutely loved what she did, loved her staff, and loved her kids. I felt an instant connection with her, as she explained that she had three daughters just like I do. Of course,hers are a little older I assume, as Shirley is also a grandmother! She went on to say that her grandson is in the Army and has spent some time deployed as well. So, she knows how this military thing works. WOW. My eyes filled up with tears, as it just blew me away...to think that Shirley thought enough about me - someone she doesn't even know - to take the time to sit and write this letter...to me. It means a lot. More than she will ever know.

Another thing that meant a lot to me was inside a small manila envelope in the box. Inside was a laminated prayer written specifically for me. It was accompanied by a card that read: "The enclosed prayer has been written specifically for you. The person who signed your prayer is committed to praying for you daily throughout your deployment. We are grateful to you for your service to our country. We ask that God keep you in His loving care and bring you home safely." I couldn't believe it. Just when I thought I couldn't get any MORE emotional about this box, I did. I won't get into what my very own personal prayer says (there's a photo of it), but I will say this much about it. Thank you Mike Hyland. The fact that you're there praying for me means a lot. I will do my best to be the best person I can be to be worthy of all this. I promise you that. The card is in my ID card holder that I carry around my neck with me everywhere I go. Know that you and all the people of Christ Lutheran Church in Valencia, California will always be close to my heart - literally. I can't thank you all enough.

And Karolle...God truly has blessed me with an angel. I can't thank you enough for what you do - not only for me - but for all of us who are in harm's way. I'm so very thankful for you and for all the people of your church for thinking of me, and of us, as we do what we were sent here to do. Know that I am very grateful; as I'm sure everyone is whose lives you've touched with blessings such as this. One day I hope to be able to visit Christ Lutheran Church...there'd be no better feeling in the world than to see the smiling faces of those very people who helped me get through my time here. I honestly believe that the box and the blessings inside it were right on time, as I felt completely lifted out of the "funk" I was in yesterday when I woke up this morning. Thank you ALL for that...and thank you Karolle...thank you for all this...and for just being my friend. No words will ever be able to tell you how thankful I am for that.

This afternoon, I went to the gym for a run after a couple days off. My knees felt fine, and the stretching I've been doing has obviously helped. I only ran for three miles today, as I just want to ease myself back into it. It's strange for me to say "only" three miles. It seems so easy now to do that after running seven plus miles for almost a week straight, to include that ten mile day - something I've NEVER done before in my life. My knees felt fine throughout, and still feel fine now. I just have to let my body talk to me and, of course, I need to listen. That's my biggest problem. Next week, I'll start two-a-days in the gym, running early in the day and lifting later on in the evening. I'm feeling some motivation now on many fronts...so I have to take advantage of it any way I can. When I go home, I want to feel accomplished...not only professionally, but personally as well.

I went back to the office, where I continued to work on the Master Training Plan (MTP) until it was finished. With that completed, I was able to create Individual Training Plans (ITPs) for each of the Afghan soldiers. The MTP is the guide that I follow to train each individual. The ITP's are pretty much the same as the MTP, only the ITP's have dates, annotations made about particular training, signatures, etc.,etc. Each person progresses on their own at their own level. Some of the stuff they might all learn together and be able to be signed off on together...other stuff one of them might get faster than the others. It's all on them. Regardless, now I will have a good gauge on who's doing what and I've established a better way to keep me FOCUSED. I think that was my problem before. I wasn't focused on anything. My thoughts were kind of all over the place - as far as training goes - due to the barriers I have to deal with there on a daily basis. Since I can't control the barriers, I decided to do something about the things I CAN control. I think this plan will work out well. In addition to that, I think I'm going to start pulling one or two of them over to our camp and train them in our office once in a while. That was actually Sandy's idea. She's noticed my frustration, and has done everything she can to help. I would work for her anytime, anywhere, any place. She's a great boss who really knows her stuff. And, she lets me do my job. I have so much respect for her, as she's just a great PERSON in general. Anyway, bringing them to the office will give me more individual time to train, without the annoying distractions that we've been having. That's the plan as of now anyway. We'll see how it goes. Again, I'm motivated now, and I just don't think I was thinking clearly before. I can't fail these guys though, and certainly can't fail those above me in the office, at IJC, or in the Air Force, who have put full faith and trust in me to do what I'm best at. I will not fail. I will not let these ANA soldiers fail. I'm back in business. It feels good to be back on track again.

Another mission outside the wire is coming up. As my faithful followers already know, that's all I can say about that. Just know that if the blog isn't updated for a few days, there's a good reason for it. I'll be typing on my own laptop in MS Word, or writing the old-fashioned way - with pen and paper - keeping up with my daily events while I'm gone; whatever it takes to keep this thing going. I'll get the site updated as soon as I'm able, and I'll let everyone know what happened afterwards. I'd love to share it with everyone ahead of time, but it's just not safe for me to do so. Once it's over though, I'll tell you what I can.

As you've all seen, my emotions continue to go from good to bad, satisfied to frustrated. This life I'm living right now is unlike anything I've ever gone through. I'm a positive and happy person for the most part, so it's hard on me some days to feel the way I have. It definitely wears on you to feel so much negativity and feel like there isn't much you can do about it. One thing is for certain though. I have to be true to ME, no matter what or who I come across. I'm probably learning as much about myself right now as I ever have. Some things I like and some things I don't. I'm hoping that once all this is said and done, I'll have discovered a way to rid myself of the things I don't like. I'm getting there. Again, this is definitely an experience for me at this point in my life and career. It's nothing like I ever expected, and I don't think I was prepared for that. But as I've said numerous times, I'm taking things day by day and trying to keep my head up. I continue to put my full faith and trust in God that He will lead me down the right path and help me get to where I'm supposed to be going in all this. That, coupled with listening to words of wisdom from a few friends...I know I just can't go wrong.

Day Thirty Two

WOW. Hard to believe that seventeen years ago today I was flying over the bright lights of San Antonio late at night, with Military Training Instructors waiting to yell at me when I landed. 11 February 1993…the day I joined the Air Force and landed at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas for Basic Training. Sometimes it seems like yesterday, as I can vividly remember looking out my window seat window at the lights of the city wondering just what I had gotten myself into. Little did I know that I’d be sitting here doing this seventeen years later. On the flip side, it’s hard to believe that I only have three years left. Tomorrow, it will be cool to say that I have LESS than three years left. Yes, I’m counting down the days.

Today was pretty uneventful, as are most Thursdays. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother going over to the ANA camp on Thursdays, as all we do is socialize for an hour or so, then it seems that all the ANA soldiers are just ready to punch out and go home.

When we go to their office, we discovered that they had a new soldier and he was getting some basic camera training from Rohullah Amin. It was nice to watch him show this new guy some of the very things I had taught him myself. I got Rohullah Amin to sit down and walk me through the digitizing steps I had shown him yesterday, but for the most part, he forgot it all. It was frustrating, as we’re in this ten by ten foot room with about fifteen people in it. Everyone is talking and it just wasn’t an environment fit for training. We decided to leave, and Sandy mentioned that maybe we should bring Rohullah Amin to our office once or twice a week to train instead. I think that’s a good idea. My goal is to just train him up on everything I can, then he can train the rest of the soldiers himself long after I’m gone. Sure, I’ll spend time with others as well when I can, but that’s my goal. If I can get one of them to know as much as I do, I’ll feel better knowing that the others can eventually learn it from someone who speaks their language.

After getting back to camp, I decided to take a nap since there really wasn’t much to do. I’m taking another day off from running today since my knees feel pretty good and I want them to stay that way. I really need to get in the gym and start lifting. I’ve done a little bit of lifting, but not like what I’m used to doing. Omar wouldn’t be happy with me right now. I have to stop being lazy and get into a routine.

Mentally, I’m just so out of it lately. It’s hard sometimes to be sitting here so far away from home doing nothing. Sometimes I wonder if it was even worth it to come here, as these 1-2 hour workdays are pointless at times. Sure, we find other things to do to fill our days, but there’s only so much you can do around here. My range of emotions is crazy…some days I feel like I’m doing some good, and other days I wonder if anything I’m doing is ever going to make a difference. It’s hard for me to get motivated about anything when I’m as frustrated as I have been.

Tomorrow is an off day, so I’ll probably sleep as much as possible in order to pass the time. It’s been just over a month and I’m already ready to go home.

Day Thirty One

Well, it’s definitely not getting any warmer here. It’s not often that I wear multiple layers of clothing to bed at night, but I sure did that last night. It was one of those nights where you laid on your stomach with both arms underneath you. If you stayed absolutely still, you could get warm…but if you moved at all…even an inch…you’d get cold again. You just gotta love it when you sleep in a hut that’s 30 degrees, with only two space heaters in it that have no business trying to heat an area that size.

We went over to the ANA camp where I was able to conduct some video editing training with Rohullah Amin. I showed him how to capture footage from the camera and digitize it to the computer. He didn’t do too bad on his own, but did have a couple problems along the way. I’d say it was pretty successful training though, considering the magnitude of what he learned and how fast I “forced” him to learn it. I’ll continue to reinforce things with him as we go along, until it becomes habit and he gets used to it.

In the middle of our training, he got called out to go document the After Action Review wrap-up of the exercise the ANA has been going through. Of course, Rohullah Amin grabs a video camera and a still camera, while others just stand around in the office. We still have to work on that. I was a little frustrated, as we were in the middle of training, but I just grabbed a still camera myself and went over to shoot photos, while standing by Rohullah Amin’s side training more on shooting video. From what I heard, the ANA as a whole did very well in the exercise. That was good to hear. The more they practice and plan, the better prepared they will be to defend themselves on their own in the future.

That was pretty much the end of our day over at the ANA camp. We came back to our camp at had lunch and worked on the new Facebook and YouTube sites we’re building for our work here in the region. The internet was crazy, as it didn’t work for most of the day and caused us many problems.

I decided not to run today, as my knees are pretty sore. This “runner’s knee” thing doesn’t sound too serious, but I do have to take it easy for a little while, and do some stretching to help get things back to normal.

Not too much else to talk about. Tomorrow’s a half day and I assume we’ll get no training done. Here’s hoping that something happens that will surprise me.

Day Thirty

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any colder, I woke up this morning to that being just the case. It was a frigid 20 degrees outside and the rocks that normally fill the road were barely visible underneath a thin layer of ice formed from the unusually low temperatures and the rain and snow that fell last night.

I was able to sleep surprisingly well last night once I went back to bed after my twelve hour “snooze” following the Super Bowl. It’s strange how a day can get lost when you go to sleep at 8am and get up at 9pm. I guess in this situation I’m in, any way to make a day go by fast is a good way.



Today was a good day. We went over to the ANA camp early this morning for a mock press conference with the Commander. It’s the norm during exercises to have the commander speak to the press regarding what is happening. In this case, as I said before, the event was an earthquake exercise, so the commander had to respond to questions about that. Generally, our job as Public Affairs is to prepare the commander for the questions he’ll be asked and take care of the media. In this case, with us mentoring the ANA PA soldiers, we had to teach them how to prepare the commander, show them how to set up cameras, deal with the media, and so forth. Most of this was done by Sandy, as she is kind of “shadowing” the Public Affairs Officer. I videotaped the event along with my ANA soldiers, and talked them through some things on how they should prepare their equipment. The ultimate goal is to make the commander look good, and have him say the right things to the media. Sandy came up with some tough questions, but the commander handled himself very well. After it was over, LtCol Niem said that the commander was very happy with him and his PA office, and felt that things went well. That was great to hear. We discovered that this was the first time in four years of exercises that the PA office was even involved. WOW. I can’t imagine how things were before, as press conferences are normally a PA-controlled event. We heard that many people didn’t even know about LtCol Niem and what he did, so putting him “on the map” was a good thing. Ultimately, the commander was happy and again, that was great to hear. It means we’re doing our job…and doing it well. How they got along doing this stuff for four years without PA is beyond me.

Of course, after the press conference, everyone in their office had somewhere else to be, so that ended training for today. I interviewed Sandy after the press conference so I could use her words to put a story together, so we made our way back to our office where I started working on it, along with finishing up what I was working on the past two days. Sandy and I kicked around the idea of creating our own Facebook, and YouTube pages to give us another outlet for our media. I created a Facebook account, but we’re still working on it. Once we get it done and ready, I’ll send out the link and friend requests.

I decided after a while that I had to run, since I didn’t run yesterday due to my long Rip Van Winkle type day. As luck would have it, neither Chris nor Sandy ran yesterday, so I didn’t lose any more ground than I already had starting a day after they did. Chris ran for four miles putting him at fifty three total. Sandy ran later for six miles putting her at fifty three total as well. I was sitting at forty six when she got done, so you can probably guess what I did. Yes sir…I ran for seven miles to tie us all up at fifty three total. I’m back in the game! I have to be fair though and say that Chris just started marathon training and is on a strict schedule. The schedule for today was for him to run only four miles. I’ll be honest and say that Chris is a much better runner than I am. He could probably run ten miles per day without any trouble, whereas I struggled mightily to do that myself the other day. I have never, nor will I ever, have the desire to think about, train for, or ever run a marathon. There’s just no way. Running for one hour straight has been hard enough…running for three plus hours is unthinkable. So give Chris some credit here. The numbers might say differently, but he would whip me good if he wanted to. If he does happen to run that marathon in Kansas City he keeps talking about, I might just be there…not to run it…but to support him of course. (I just said I would never think of running it myself…weren’t you reading?) Kansas City isn’t far from where I live in the states, and I might just make the trip. I have much respect for him and the goals he has set for himself.

It’s cold sitting here, as it’s about 15 degrees outside and the heater is NOT working in here. I really hope the heater in my tent is working tonight. Can you picture me in my fleece jacket and hat covering my ears while I type with gloves on? OK, so I don’t really have gloves on. You’d probably be able to tell if that was the case as mie ryting wood prolly luk sumting lyke ths if eye wuz. Yes, that was done strictly for entertainment value. If you’re laughing, good…if not, then…ummmm…whatever. Pretend you didn’t see it. [Wow...spellcheck just went nuts on me!]

I’m ready for bed and ready to do this all over again tomorrow. Hopefully another good day is in store for us as we trek along this road to advance the capabilities of our ANA partners. We’re taking small steps in the right direction now it seems, so I’ll keep my head up and hope it stays that way. It’s working well so far.

Day Twenty Nine

Well, since the Super Bowl was on so early in the morning, I decided to just stay up through the night to watch it. So, that's how today started. I sat in the Dining Facility, where they had a small TV tucked in the corner with the game on, and some football streamers and stuff on the walls. It was rather inconvenient, as the area we were in was very small, and they had a huge room right next to us with a bigger TV in it that they refused to use. Go figure.

They brought out some "football food" for us; wings, poppers, cheese sticks, fries, etc., etc., so we at least had something. It was nothing spectacular, but since I had just run ten miles, I figured I could stray from my current diet a little bit. The food was pretty good actually.

I spent most of the game annoyed to be quite honest. I'm not sure if it was me just feeling tired after the run and being up all night, or if it was just stupid people. I swear that everyone around me knew exactly what was going to happen on every play. One guy behind me was the biggest know-it-all in the world. He knew everything about run plays and pass plays apparently. He would say "run play" or "pass play" before EVERY (and I mean EVERY) play. Talk about getting on my nerves. OK, let's think about this...Peyton is in the shotgun, Addai is running off the field, and there's no running back in the backfield. Hmmmm. I'm guessing that it's going to be a pass play? Give me a break...please. Another guy next to me seemed to know everything there was to know about football. Another guy knew nothing about football, but tried to act like he did. It was funny because an ESPN commercial came on and he said, "hey we get an ESPN commercial?" Now, reading that may not seem funny to you, but he actually said the word ESPN, as opposed to saying the individual letters, E-S-P-N. He pronounced it like, "ES'PIN." Again, he had probably never watched sports before in his life, but was trying to act cool. I couldn't help but laugh inside. What a dork.

The other thing that I didn't like about my Super Bowl experience was watching all the insincere scrub pro athletes on TV saying their ten seconds of "thanks for what you do" to the troops. It's so fake and virtually meaningless. I don't know why AFN or anyone even bothers to do that. And it says alot about pro athletes when it's only the backups to the backups that you see on there saying anything anyway. One guy wasn't even being serious, acting like a fool when he was saying "thank you." These guys have no idea. Come spend six months in any of our shoes and we'll see how funny you think things are then. Idiots.

The game sucked for me. I just wanted to be home eating pigs in a blanket and cheese dip and veggie trays at home with my family like we always do. I just kind of sat there by myself, cheering inside when Peyton and the Colts went up 10-0. And, when Peyton threw that last interception to pretty much seal the Saints victory, all I could do was shake my head, grab my coat and get ready to walk out. There were no football pools or friends there. There was no family. It was just me. I really missed home today.

The game was over around 8am here. I went to bed, as I was tired after the long run and being up all night. I have nothing else to write about for today, as I just woke up and it's already 10:30 pm here. I know, I know...but we had the day off today and I can. HAHAHA Hopefully after I get done with this and finish eating, I'll be able to go back to sleep after sleeping for the past twelve hours. I guess we'll see.

Day Twenty Eight

I woke up today and walked outside to head to the shower, and was hit by cold, blustery winds and snowflakes hitting me in the face. How does it go from 60 degrees to 30 degrees in one day? I thought the further away from December we get, the better the weather is supposed to be? This isn't a good sign.

We went to the ANA camp and there was an exercise going on. Rohullah Amin got called out to go to the ANA Command Post, where LtCol Niem was. Apparently, they were having a morning briefing with General Murad. I decided to go over there, since Rohullah Amin was over there.

I saw him when I got there, videotaping what was going on while he had the still camera around his neck. I swear, no one else does anything in their office. I went up to him and grabbed the still camera off his neck so he could videotape and not worry about stills. I went around and shot some still photos of the briefing and got some decent shots that Sandy submitted to various places.

After the briefing, we went back to the ANA PA office and did some training on Photoshop. Chris and I showed Rohullah Amin how to do a bunch of things in photoshop with photos. Rohullah Amin did pretty good, as he was able demonstrate rather well what we had showed him. That was a good thing.

We left the ANA office and went back to our office. I brought Bari, our interpreter, with us so he could go through my tape of the boot camp graduation and translate what General Murad had said during the ceremony. Once he got that done, I was able to record him saying it in English so I could use that over General Murad's video. Editing the video together was interesting, as I had to piece together every part just right. I worked on that for a little while, then decided I was going to hit the gym.

After my eight mile run yesterday, Chris must've felt the "heat," as he came in with his own ten mile number today. I had cut into his lead good and then he goes and runs ten miles? WOW. I prepared myself mentally to run at least what I had run yesterday. Long story short...I ran ten miles myself today. The first seven miles were ok, but the last three were brutal. Normally, I can space out listening to my iPod and the run doesn't seem so bad. The last couple minutes of this ten mile run were killers. I couldn't space out, as I could think about was my aching legs. Seeing the words "COOLDOWN" come up on the treadmill was amazing. I felt pretty good afterwards, and glad I had done it. I discovered that I have what's called "runner's knee," after much more research and talking to medical folks. I need to do some stretching and stuff like that to get it feeling better. That sure is alot better than having a "sprain" of some sort. Either way, it hurts and it's now in BOTH knees.

After the run, I went to take a shower and back to the office to work on my video. I got it done for the most part, but just have a couple things to throw in there still. The Super Bowl will be on here in a few hours, so I'll pick up the blog for tomorrow with that since it will be 4am here. I'm rooting for Peyton and the Colts!

Day Twenty Seven

Saturdays are normally "sleeping in" days ya know? The weekend and all. Of course, we work on Saturdays and Sundays here so I can never remember what day it is. It's a problem.

We went over the the ANA camp this morning to see what was going on. LtCol Inglin wasn't leaving until the afternoon on a convoy out of Camp Spann, so we wanted him to be able to meet the ANA PA soldiers. He got to meet some of them and talk for a little while. Maj Ahmad and Said Mohammad were searching through boxes of MiniDV tapes looking for a tape of the U.S. Ambassador visit from a while ago. It was funny watching them load tape after tape into their little "clamshell" video player, knowing full well that I had already hooked up their Sony source deck, and they could both be looking at different tapes at the same time. We finally powered up the system for them and told them to use both decks in order to search faster. Apparently, they're so used to doing things the way they've been doing, it slipped their mind that they had another way to view the tapes. Either that or they just didn't know how to turn it on. (No really...that IS a possibility, trust me)

There is an exercise going on here, so LtCol Niem was over in the Command Post dealing with that stuff. We went over to see him and made sure he was doing ok. Sandy explained some things to him about how to split shifts up so he didn't have to work there all night long. He seemed to get it, but I think he just doesn't want to let go. While he's "friends" with his soldiers, I'm not sure he trusts them so much. He's been doing everything in that office for so long, that it's hard for him to rely on anyone else to do anything right. Sandy will get through to him, so I'm not worried. It will all make sense to them one day...hopefully.

We went back to the ANA PA office and Major Ahmad and Said were still going at it. I did a short interview with Major Ahmad about the graduation ceremony the other day, so I could put something together to send up to headquarters. Of course, they lost the tape I shot during the ceremony which has the main camera footage and the main audio on it though. So, I couldn't do anything else with the video today. They really have no accountability system for their tapes. They're everywhere. That's one of the things I need to educate them on. Now that I have their new hard drive setup in there, we're going to create a new digital video library for them. That way, when they get requests like the one they got today, they can just go into the computer, find the "U.S. Ambassador Visit" folder, click on the file and export it to DVD. It will dramatically reduce the amount of time they waste searching through hours of tapes. I should know. Long before the digital video and nonlinear editing days, things were alot tougher than they are now. So I've been there. The way I figure it, these soldiers are about fifteen to twenty years behind us as far as technology goes. My goal is to fast-forward them to the twenty-first century before I leave here. Six months to move them forward twenty years. That would be good, right?

We came back to camp for lunch and to see LtCol Inglin off. He's headed back to Kabul today. We had a good visit with him and again, it was nice to have the person we work for actually come see what we're dealing with, where we live, etc., etc. Sandy had a new office sign made for our building and the four of us got a photo of it before LtCol Inglin left. Good stuff.

At 1400, we went back to the ANA camp to talk to the Religious Cultural Advisor (RCA) about doing a "Day in the Life of an ANA Soldier" video. I got the rundown of what he wanted and it was very clear that this was going to be a very significant event. He said it will be the first-ever of its kind in the country of Afghanistan, and that the General will use it where ever he goes. They will also air it on the news and other places to get the word out about the ANA and what they do. The significance is that the Taliban message to civilians is that ANA soldiers aren't Muslim. That's their "attack" on getting civilians to be against the ANA. This video will be used to "counter" (so to speak) that message. As I've said in past posts, the "big picture" here is about getting the message out to the people. To get them to understand what is really going on here and understand truth. It's these false messages that produce bad things and bad people. You can bet your last dollar that I will do everything in my power to make this happen. The ANA RCA Colonel said, "I've want to do this when I was in RCA staff...I just need a producer." If only you could've seen my face. Hell, I WISH I could've seen my face. Can you see the sly grin and imagine the thought going through my head when he said that? Oh yeah. If he only knew. He has no idea how much I'm going to blow this video up. He has no idea...and it's going to be my pleasure to knock his socks off. You need a video producer? Really? Where ever will I find one? HAHAHA Can you see me smiling?

My knee was hurting a little bit this morning and throughout the day, but after eating so much yesterday and not running, I decided I was going to run today no matter what. I was dragging today and very tired, but had to force myself to get going. I'm glad I did. I ran for six miles, but felt so good during the last mile that I decided to go for two more. So, I ran for eight miles tonight. My knee held up good for the most part. The first couple miles were painful, but after that I think it just went numb and has been fine ever since. I hope I'm not making it worse. I just can't sit still for too long, and now that I'm actually getting so into this running thing, I don't want to stop. I narrowed the gap between Chris, Sandy, and I, so I'm getting there. I pray that God lets my knee hold up so I can continue going at it.

We got a little bit done today. Tomorrow we have a meeting early in the morning with the ANA guys and we'll get some training in then. Things are progressing, albeit slowly again. With that said, I think it's appropriate to end today's post with a quote from my PA brother Chris, as it really sums up today and most of the days we've been here so far:

"Having another less-than-productive day with our Afghan partners...to say something is done on Afghan time is not a compliment and everything we do is on Afghan time...sigh..."

I couldn't have said it better myself buddy.