Wounded Marine Seminar

Ray just had opportunity to do a two day Life Mapping (called Masterplan) seminar with the new Wounded Marine program here at K-Bay. There were 12 men present plus their company commander, Battalion chaplain, and the new Regimental chaplain. At one point the Divisional chaplain from Okinawa came in and sat through about an hour of the seminar.

In determining where each man was in regard to their relationship with God, about 9 of the 12 indicated that God really wasn't playing any part in their lives. That included their company commander (so much for positive follow-up). Coupled with this, the event was mandatory so it made it a neutral field when it came to religion. So he were talking to a group who mostly were unconcerned about spiritual things and he didn't have the freedom to teach the seminar like he would if it was a voluntary event.

However, Ray was able to indirectly share spiritual things through two different areas. When he worked on developing a purpose statement Ray's assistant, SSgt Casey Pater, a Marine who is a mature Christian and whom he has taken through the seminar, we used our purpose statements as examples as we developed this area of the seminar. Because God is central to our statements, explaining how we came to use the words we did, allowed us to indirectly plant seeds of spiritual truth. Then, as we moved through the seven major areas of life, we were able to develop the spiritual area as we related biblical principles of morality and guarding one's heart (as taught in Prov 4:23-24) without quoting Bible verses or other religious words (that was difficult).

Overall it seemed to be helpful to them from the comments they shared with us. As a result, related in part to doing the seminar, we were invited to a dinner with Navy Chaplains in Hawaii and their visiting deputy chief of Navy chaplains/Chaplain of the Marine Corps. This should give us better exposure and a sense that we are here to help.

We hope we will have more opportunities with the Wounded Marine Program in the future as more men will be added to this group. Ray will be doing the seminar again for CREDO Hawaii (Chaplain's Religious Enrichment Development Operations) in August with a smaller group. It will not a mandatory event so he will have more latitude with the material.