PatrickMead.net

You can’t help but notice how much God thinks of family. As soon as you begin Genesis you see Him establishing family before nation, tribe, or society. In chapters 4, 5, 11 and more you see lists of who gave birth to who and how the family worked out (or didn’t). In chapter ten we [...]

We got into Beaufort, SC at 6PM on Wednesday and made our plans for the next day. We were up at 5AM and out the door on our way to Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island at 6:20. The new Marines were going to have their final motivational run at 7AM and we wanted to [...]

We leave on Wednesday and will be back around midnight Friday for Duncan’s graduation!!! The Eagle, Globe and Anchor ceremony is on Thursday and graduation is Friday morning. We’ll order the DVDs and take lots of photos. If we can keep our site up (Theobloggers is working on it. The frequent outages seem to be [...]

There are lots of spiritual and moral lessons one may gain from this news, but I am going to leave that to everyone else. For me, I just want to let all of you know that your prayers, and ours, were answered: Duncan is doing well. 
We hadn’t heard that good, strong voice of his since [...]

Many of us know the Mormons only via the Osmonds, Mitt Romney, Christmas choirs, and earnest, well scrubbed missionaries on bicycles, but the history of the Mormon church(es) is a fascinating, mind boggling mix of farce, faith, failure, and fulsomeness. One of the followers of Joseph Smith — and some say his rightful successor — [...]

NOTE: one week from today we will climb on a plane and, Lord willing, head to South Carolina. Family Day is next Thursday, July 26th and graduation is Friday July 27th. Right after graduation, we will get some lunch, say goodbye to those who came to see Duncan earn his eagle, globe, and anchor and [...]

I love Knoxville. I’ve spoken at several congregations there over the years and have never had a bad experience. That said, I have had some strange ones due to the language barrier between us. If I could spell phonetically what I hear when a Knoxville person speaks I could make this clearer, but English only [...]

A new letter arrived! It’s a
long one and I have some notes on it afterwards.
Thank you for your prayers
for our son.
 
***
Saturday, July 7th
Mom and Dad,
 
Finally we are allowed to
write again and man…what a week this has been! Sunday afternoon we moved all
of our gear out to some old shacks they call "warrior town." This [...]

Two quick things — the 7th chapter was finally posted, three weeks after the last one!, at thenovelproject.patrickmead.net
Please read The Crucible below. Parris Island and the Beaufort, SC area are under a heat emergency today with a heat index of at least 105 degrees. It is expected to last for the next few days — [...]

 Although we can’t be certain — for the recruits themselves are not certain — we believe that Duncan will enter The Crucible sometime in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday morning. For those who aren’t in the know, The Crucible is a 54 hour test of ethics, strength, teamwork, intelligence, and determination. Duncan will be given [...]