This is the chapel at Camp GarryOwen.  It is right inside the gate, on the left, so you can hardly miss it.  It is pretty small.  As you can see, it is a Quonset hut (a little, half-barrel shaped building of corrugated steel) covered with sprayed insulation and paint.  You can estimate the size of the building by comparing the height of the door to the size of the building.

     Here is a view of the front of the chapel.  The stone façade is a very nice touch.  Technically speaking, the cross on the façade, and the three crosses in the yard (you can only see one of them behind the “bell tower”) are prohibited by Army regulation.  Army chapels are required to be multi-use facilities, meaning they can be used for worship by members of a variety of faiths, or they can be used as classrooms for training.  Therefore all religious symbols must be able to be removed or covered.  However, no one has complained or told me to have them taken down.

     I love having the bell.  I always wanted a church with a bell.  However there’s one small problem with the bell.  There’s no lever and rope on the bell carriage, with which to ring it.  So we don’t get to ring it at the start of worship services, as I’d wish to.  I think I’m going to make that one of my priority projects.  I don’t even know whether the bell has a decent sound to it.  It’s pretty small, and I’m not sure what metal it’s made of.  Looks to me like cast iron, which doesn’t produce such a pretty sound as brass.

This is the nave of the chapel.  Usually it’s not that dark.  I’m not sure why it came out so gloomy looking the day I took that picture.

     Generally, it looks more like this.  This is a Sunday morning worship service – with perhaps a few less people than usual attending.  In this picture you can sort of see the cross and decorative woodwork on the east wall.  During Roman Catholic services, a crucifix is placed there, instead of a plain cross.

     Of course, that’s me at the pulpit.  I think we were probably singing the opening hymn when this photo was taken, given that the members of the congregation have books in their hands.

The gentleman playing the guitar is Pastor Choe, a long-time friend of the 4^th Squadron, 7^th Cavalry.  He serves as kind of a volunteer associate pastor to the Protestant congregation on post, and leads the praise and worship music each week.  He’s a pretty good musician.  He plays the guitar and the organ for us, and I assume he also plays the piano, but he hasn’t done that in our worship service.

     He is actually an ordained pastor in the Korean Presbyterian Church (a conservative church very much like the Southern Baptists in the US), and pastors his own church in town, in addition to owning and operating a restaurant.  The young man at the keyboard is his son, who is a First Lieutenant in the Republic of Korea Army.  He does not worship with us regularly, but had come to visit his father for the weekend, and agreed to play a special music presentation for us during that Sunday’s service.

     This is the chapel annex, where the fellowship hall, the chaplain’s office, the chaplain assistants’ office, and the area I call the “lounge” are found.  As you can see, it is well proportioned to the chapel.  Though you can’t see it well, because the wind is not lifting it, in the yard there is a pipe which serves as a socket for the chaplain’s flag.  We try to remember to display it whenever I’m in the chapel, so that people know they can drop in and see me.

     Although you can’t really see it, there’s a parking area, just big enough for one small truck, to the right, by the end of the building.  Of course, since we’re not allowed to have privately owned vehicles, and since we all live within close walking distance of the chapel, the parking area is only used when we get our tactical vehicle (a Hummer) out and are going to the field.

     Still, technically, I suppose I do have my own parking space.

As you enter the annex, and turn to the left, you see the fellowship hall.  This is literally a hall, between the chapel annex and the chapel itself.  The only appliances there are the microwave, the ‘fridge, and the coffeepot.  We stand around and socialize after service for about 20 minutes, but there’s no place to sit, nor room for furniture for sitting, either.

If you turn to the right from the fellowship hall, or straight ahead from the chapel annex exterior door, then you see my office.  The pictures are on the floor because the chapel was recently renovated, and the fasteners were pulled off the walls.  The sofas were obviously acquired locally.  They’re nice, but they are also very low – clearly they’re made for Koreans not for Americans.  The bottle of Febreeze on the windowsill was left behind by the previous chaplain.  He had a dog that he kept in the office, and frequently let sleep on the couch. 

     Out of concern for lingering odors in the carpet and couch, he left me a bottle of Resolve carpet cleaner and two bottles of fabric deodorant.

      Once you get into the office, and turn to the left, you can see the rest of the office.  It’s in it’s normal state of (un)tidiness.  Actually it’s a little better now than it was.  I’ve cleaned up that desk a lot in the last couple of days, but I don’t expect it to last very long.  I’ve gotten rid of the chair, though.  Now I have a chair that’s not a desk chair on wheels – it’s a dinette chair on skids.  The nice, padded, wheeled chairs were old ones from the squadron conference room. They are nice, but the gas cylinders that make them go up and down leak, so they don’t stay at a comfortable height. 

     Actually, at their maximum height they still aren’t QUITE high enough to type comfortably, anyway.  Since I’m working with a laptop computer that sits on top of the desk, the keyboard is a little high for easy typing and so I need a pretty tall chair.

As you come into the chapel annex, if you turn to the right instead of left, you see the area I call the lounge.  With a TV, VCR, table, dinette chairs, occasional chair, couch and water bubbler, it’s the height of luxury, when we want to take a break during the workday.

Straight ahead from the chapel annex door, on the right of the chaplain’s office, is the chaplain assistants’ office.  It looks gloomy in this shot, but it’s really not.  It also looks tight, like a very small closet.  Actually, it’s tight like a very large closet.  You can only see about a third of the room, and it looks much smaller than it is, because of the wall lockers against the walls.

     Here’s a much better-lit view of the same area.  The cheerful guy at the keyboard is one of my two Chaplain Assistants, Sergeant James Davis.  He’s almost three months older than I am, which is something of an adjustment for me.  I’m used to working with assistants who are ten or more years younger than I am, but SGT Davis has experience and focus and motivation that I’m only just learning to make proper use of as a leader.  I do also have PFC Song, my Korean Chaplain Assistant, who is fourteen years younger than I, so I guess he can be the one who makes me feel old, as my previous assistants have tended to do.

This is the rest of the Chaplain Assistants’ office.  The desk is PFC Song’s.  Again, it’s not as gloomy as it looks in this shot.  However it IS as cramped as it looks in this shot.  Actually, it’s opened up a little, because the steel wall locker to the left of the desk is now gone.  It was falling apart anyway, so we got rid of it, and put the contents into another container.