The Family Letter

Today we have a link to a museum in California. Those in the area of Los Angeles can drop in, the rest of us will have to do with the online version.

The Air Force received the last item of paperwork (a letter of recommendation) today, which wraps up my part of Phase II. For those curious, that paperwork included:

• Employment and educational history for the past 10 years. This included salaries at each job and my reason for leaving.¹
• Health history back as far as I could go. This one included health insurance companies with policy number, doctors, and a list of "have you now or have you ever…" items.²
• Transcripts from college and seminary.
• Certification of ordination.³
• Minimum of three letters of recommendation, one from my present supervisor.
• All OPRs.⁴
• All training reports from my chaplain candidate tours. Over four years I had three reports.⁵
• A couple of miscellaneous forms having to do with things like my obligation should I come on active duty (three years), direct deposits, blah, blah, etc. etc.
• A form with reflection-type questions about the chaplain service and the military, etc.
• The same form completed by a senior chaplain who asked me the same questions in an interview⁶

Phase III will involve more paperwork, I'm sure. It will also involve a trip to MEPS (see also here for a narrative about MEPS). And… Hm, I just looked at the checklist and if I list all the Phase III stuff here this will go another two pages. Never mind, I'll post that later.

God and the AF willing (and the creek don't rise).

Remind anyone of the ordination process? I feel like I'm waiting for word from the COM.

1. This one was fun, since I had a dozen little jobs the year between my first career and seminary. [back]
2. For example, "Have you now or have you ever had uncontrollable twitching when filling out government forms? If so, provide details in comments." [back]
3. Had to get a letter from my bishop for that, since my ordination certificate is a big framed thing. The bishop did a smash-up job, with diocesan seal and all! [back]
4. Officer Performance Reports. There was only one, from 2007. Fortunately it was a good one and contained the phrase "Bring on active duty." [back]
5. Which, remarkably, I managed to get copies of from an office someplace in reserve-land. Again, all three were positive and did also recommend active duty. [back]
6. It was an odd sort of interview, so I hope my answers came out okay on paper! [back]

Today's link is, "a list of the most annoying and common logic flaws and stereotypes found in movies." This could prove to be a lot of fun!

In reverse order: Today's link is to a drinking game one can play while watching the State of the Union address. I'm not linking there simply because I'd rather not encourage this sort of thing. Not because alcohol is of the devil or anything like that. I just don't see drinking games as an appropriate, disciplined use of alcohol–often leading to abuse.

But I will link to the transcript of the speech. It airs really early out here if you want it live. Either way, I was out last night with one of our outreach ministries so would have missed it. Most years I just read it the day after.

Today I got word from the Air Force that my Phase II package is almost complete. It lacks just one letter of recommendation and it will be ready to go before the board in March. Then they'll decide if I can move on to Phase III (as I understand it). *gulp* Shades of COMs and such.

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