Graduation Banquet

CH-BOLC is winding down and we celebrated tonight with a graduation banquet at the NCO club. Here I am with my beautiful bride of sixteen years.


Here are a few of the guys from my squad. Myself and the chaplain in dress blues are going active duty. The others are in either National Guard or Army Reserves.

Thank-you

Thank You for your thoughts and prayers. God is so good and I am thankful that his grace is sufficient. On Friday, I will Graduate CH-BOLC and my family and I will head to Florida to be with the rest of my family who is gathering there. We will have a memorial service on Saturday evening and then my family and I will stay there a week to help take care of things around the house.

Things are winding down here at Ft. Jackson. These three months have come and gone quickly and with the end of one phase comes the beginning of another. My family and I are looking forward to our arrival at Ft. Hood and the beginning of a new ministry there. I have included below an eight minute video that gives a glimpse of our last three months. I hope you enjoy it.

Good Bye

1:30 AM on Monday morning, August 27, 2007, My father Frank Olson passed from this life into eternity. His death follows the death of my grandmother, Gusta Larson, who passed on Friday afternoon at 2:00.

I sit here this morning choosing my words carefully because my emotions are so raw. The Army allowed me to go to Florida last weekend to see my grandmother who was in the hospital. I was able to spend an entire night with her there and watch over her as she slept. In the morning I was able to say goodbye to her for now and so long until we meet again.

My dad was better than he had been in weeks. I was able to take him out to Sonic, and Dunkin Donuts for strawberry shakes. He really loved those. We went to Home Depot and picked up materials to fix some things around the house. It was so good to just be with him.

I last talked to him just yesterday morning at about 11:00. He was able to talk fairly well but I noticed he was struggling to remember a few things. However, after he hung up with me, my Mom told me he could not remember who he had just talked to. Within a couple of hours, Mom called 911 and he was taken to the hospital.

It all happens so fast. Just yesterday it seems that I was a young boy wanting to be just like Dad. Now he is gone and I am the Dad whose boys are wanting to be like me. Soon my time will come as well and the next generation will take the lead. But until then, I will have to carry the baton.

Goodbye Dad
Goodbye Grandma

Until we meet again

My heart and my prayers are with my mom who has lost both her mother and husband withing just a couple of days. I cannot even begin to comprehend the pain and grief she is experiencing. I ask all of you who may be reading this blog to please take a moment and pray for her. Her name is Lylas Olson, or Sis as her friends like to call her. Thank you for lifting her up in your prayers!

Week 6 - End of Phase One

Greetings from the long lost blogger. Some of you have been wondering if I have fallen off the earth, or if the Army finally got the best of me. But, I am still alive and well! After recovering from a bad case of CHBOLC, I found the energy to blog again and to try to catch up a little.

The best news I can share with you is that my family arrives here in just a few hours. It has been over six weeks since I have seen them, so the reunion will be good. We will spend time swimming, fishing, playing at the playground, and going to the water park here on base.

The last two weeks have been spent mainly in the classroom covering military stuff. A few noteworthy things to mention however are interesting enough to pass along.

One of our afternoons was spent covering the history of the Chaplaincy. In the next two pictures you will see many of the items the chaplain school historian brought to class that represent the many eras of the chaplaincy. There have been chaplains in the Army ever since the Revolutionary War. Today there are well over 2000 chaplains serving in the Army as well as those serving in the other branches.



On Thursday of this past week, we took what is called a "Staff Ride" out to a place called Cowpens. A Staff Ride is opportunity for commanders to take his or her staff out to a historic military site in order to help them gain a better perspective on military history. Cowpens is a battlefield located near the South and North Carolina borders that was a critical Revolutionary battle field. The battle of Cowpens was the pivotal battle in the Southern campaign of the war.
This week began the involvement of student chaplains in the chapel services. Pictured here are Ch. May, and Ch. Kay. They are both fellow bloggers and good friends. Ch. Kay led worship that day in chapel.
On Wendnesday of this past week, our school sponsored a pray breakfast at the NCO club. The breakfast was designed to give us experience in putting a prayer breakfast together so that when we get to our future stations, we will have some idea of what is going on. Here is myself with Ch. Kevin Nagy.
One last thing worth mentioning. Here is the motor that runs the chaplain school. With out it, life would not exist.

Thanks for your prayer. Stay in touch.

Chaplain Mark

Week 5 - Days 1-3 (Monday-Wednesday)

This weekend I attended worship at Vangard Chapel here on base. It was good to see so many young soldiers in one place worshiping the Lord. It was a really good service with good worship and a good message.

The new Chief of Chaplain came to visit the school this week. General Carver was a great encouragement and seems to be a true man of God.
Most of our class time this week has been taught by Chaplains Palmer and Crisp. We are now getting into the meat of what it means to be a chaplain. I find myself hanging on every word because what they have to teach now so directly relates to my days and years that lie ahead

I feel sometimes as though I have jumped into a lake with shores in site. I can swim well, but what direction do I swim in. The challenges are great and many, but I keep swimming. I imagine with time, the things I am learning now will become old hat, but for now I struggle on.

Today is the Fourth of July and our class had the day off. We had a family BBQ this morning from 10am until 2pm. It was a great time of fellowship. There are fireworks going on outside right now, but without my family here, they don't mean all that much to me. I sure do miss them.

Thanks for your emails and encouraging messages.

Happy 4th of July!
God bless you, and God Bless this great nation!

Week 4 - Days 3-5 (Wednesay-Friday)

Chaplain Initial Military Training (CIMT) is over and phase one of CHBOLC begins on Monday. In CIMT we have learned the basic skills of being a soldier. In phases 1-3, we we learn what it means to be a chaplain in the Army. In CIMT we had the largest class ever at this school in SC. and on Monday we will add 41 new students to the class growing to a total of 171. Two weeks later, we will loose about 40 students who have not yet finished seminary and we will again pick up a few more.

The pace has really changed as we have moved toward phase one. We now spend most of our time in the classroom receiving briefs (lectures) on various topics. One of my favorite ones recently was from a retired chaplain that served in WWI, Korea, and in Vietnam. He spoke to us about what it meant to be a chaplain.

One of the not so exciting events this week was our TA-50 gear inspection. We had to haul our gear over to coleman gym and lay it out on the floor for inspection. Can your guess which chaplain forget to bring his sleeping bag? Our platoon still took third place out of five, which means, I guess, that we are average.

The big benchmark this week however was the dawning of the beret ceremony. Up until this point, all we could wear were the field caps (which I love). From now on though, we will look like the rest of the Army unless we are in the field.

We have the weekend free including most of today (friday). I plan on laying low, studying for a test next week, and watchiing Die Hard 287, or what ever number it is.

I love you all! Thanks for all your prayers and support.

Week 4 - Days 1 and 2 (Monday Tuesday)

The first phase of CHOBLC is almost over and we are finishing up with a "thunk". In other words, we are landing hard. This week began our first "real" PT with a very hard run on Monday and a full body workout today. I thought I was in decent shape, but now I feel 40. This week also began the official "Death By PowerPoint" phase. For those of you who are not familiar with PowerPoint, it is basically the same as the old fashioned overhead projectors, but works off of a computer. Imagine with me hour after hour of sitting in a classroom staring at the screen after having given all your energy during morning PT. As you can imagine, it is hard to stay awake. So pictured below is the official CHOBLC survival kit.
The kit includes coffee (to beat morning hypnosis), water (to wash down the way to strong coffee), and Mountain Dew (to keep the eyes propped open after lunch). And of course, no good chaplain goes anywhere without his/her notebook.

My mom supplemented my brown bag lunches by sending this awesome care package this weekend. Thanks so much mom! I knew I could count on you to come through. Not to be trumped however, my aunt and uncle made a second contribution to the "Save The Starving Chaplain" fund today with another great care package. Thanks so much. I love you all!

Well, on another note, I called Ft. Hood today to check on my assignment and discovered that I was reassigned yet one more time. But this is great news because I have be assigned once again to the 3rd battalion, 4th Aviation Regiment. If I had to choose one unit out of the entire 4th ID, this would be it. I was told as well, that this would be my final assignment.
Please keep my family in prayer as we prepare to move our entire platoon of children out to Ft. Hood. Pray that the Lord would prepare our hearts for the soldiers we will be ministering to and that God would open up the doors to a home on base large enough for our family.