Letter Four

Hi everyone,

I know that it has been a while since I have written, so I thought that I would just drop a line to let everyone know that I am ok. Everything is going pretty good here. We got one month down and found out that we are extended 3 more, so that kind of sucks. We have been here a little over a month now and have cleared about 2000 kilometers of road, which makes for long days considering we average about a 35 km/h pace. We have also had a few route recons where we have had to determine the trafficability of a route. We are on the road about 5 days a week with 2 maintenance days worked in throughout the week to keep our vehicles running. We are lucky if we sleep in our own beds half of the time. The good news is that we have not had anything blow up on us, nobody has shot at us, we have not had to shoot at anybody, and we haven't found anything too dangerous. There is all kinds of bad stuff going on in our area, but lucky we have not had to deal with any of it yet. So keep praying for us, I wouldn't mind if I didn't see anything all year. The weather is getting hotter and hotter every day, we are probably in the 90s now. They finally fixed the air conditioning on my vehicle so that makes the missions a little more bareable.

I have been getting a lot of your guys' packages and mail and it is awesome. Thank you very much and please keep them coming. I know some of you have asked what to send and you want to help out. I'm still working on figuring out how we can give stuff to the Afghani people without making it a tactical risk (for example: all the kids crowding around our vehicles cause we are handing stuff out makes it hard for us to complete the mission). So for the mean time just keep sending snacks, movies, pictures, letters, etc. for the soldiers and myself. Anything that tastes good or brings back memories of home helps. I'll try to do a better job at keeping you guys posted. Sometimes I just get caught in a rut and it is hard to find time to use the computer. Talk to you soon.

Love,
Todd