Got the following from Mark today.
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John all is going well here. I just been very busy.
Anyhow here is a little up date on what I have been doing over the last month.
Lori and Jacob are doing well. Lori get's a lot of help from family. Jake has had an ear infections and is teething lately.
We had a lot of preparation leading up to the elections that we had here in Afghanistan. Making sure we had enough vehicles to move all the soldiers to the places we needed them.
I spent the day of the elections on top of a hill where we could see across the whole valley. It was an uneventful day. The weather was nice. I took my DVD player with me and I actually watched a movie.
The polling site we guarded was very busy. I think there were about 60-70% of the registered voters actually voted. There was a man working for the Afghan government passing election materials out had been murdered about 20 days before the election in our area. Even under chance of death there were more people turn out to vote than my polling site back home at the Camp Taylor Elementary School.
Since the elections have been over we have been trying to get the Afghan National Army units at our FOB and in our Kandak ready for the winter. This hasn't been so easy. Everyone want to help get the ANA ready for the winter but no one has done anything to help yet. I am afraid if thing don't chance soon they could be going tough a winter like our founding fathers did at Valley Forge. Things are looking up though. We have been getting in a lot of winter clothing, and are expecting good tents with heaters for the ANA. If the tents ever show up they might have better winter quarters then us.
So you could say we have had a few challenges.
We have Australians at our FOB and they have been great to work with. Actually they help us out more then the Americans do. Of course our team doesn't have any support people so we have to rely on other people for chow, maintance, and any thing else we need. Just like working for the Boy Scouts we have to rely on other people to help us meet our goals.
I really do enjoy what we are doing here. The ANA that we work with do have an interest in making their country better. They are very professional and hard workers. They do things a bit differently then we do you could say.
This country as a whole are about 200 years behind where we are at in the United States as far as living conditions, communications, education, and medicine.
Hope to be able to send some pictures in the future.
Mark