On Christmas Day of 2007, I once again found myself on a rather remote operating base in Southern Afghanistan. I woke up that morning very homesick and feeling far from my family and especially Amanda. I remember praying for some sort of worship opportunity to celebrate the birth of my Savior. The evening prior we were told that there would be no worship service due to the fact that we were too far from any major base and there weren’t enough military chaplains to go around.
As the day started a fellow believer and I made plans to conduct our own worship later that afternoon. At about ten in the morning I walked to our Tactical Operations Center (TOC) to handle some routine paperwork when I noticed two helicopters appear on our computer tracking device about twenty miles away and heading toward our base. This struck me as odd because there were no scheduled flights in our area for that day.
Several minutes later a pilot came over the radio to let us know that the “chaplain bird” was inbound and that the chaplain would be on the ground for fifteen to twenty minutes to conduct Christmas worship. I instantly ran to find my fellow believer and the two of us practically ran down to greet the helicopters. Two UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters landed and out jumped ther other Army chaplains (one a Catholic priest and one a Protestant pastor).
So for me, Christmas Day 2007 was spent with a chaplain who had flown four hundred miles to conduct a fifteen-minute worship service complete with communion and seven other believers. God answers prayer. The helicopters circled the base for twenty minutes while the battlefield pastors worshipped and then picked up the chaplains and continued on to another remote base to conduct worship with more soldiers even further down range then we were. I will never forget Christmas worship with a rifle and helmet near a helipad in southern Afghanistan as evidence of God at work in a combat zone.
Lord, increase my faith that you hear and answer prayer according to your good will.
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24)