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Chaplain Graduate Preached Five Times a Sunday in Kuwait


Chaplain Mike Cox and the GI Joe figures
he uses to help explain his military duties to
his children.

When U.S. Army Captain Mike Cox first went to the Middle East as a chaplain, he preached as many as five services a Sunday, something most pastors in the States have never done. This was in addition to days filled with counseling among the 3,000 soldiers at Camp New York in Kuwait.

The 2001 Campbell University Divinity School graduate who was endorsed by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship had assignments at Camp Speicher at Tikrit, Iraq, and Camp Victory and Camp New York in Kuwait. The Doddridge, WV, native says that although the days were long, the hardest part of his duty was being away from his family. In his previous eight years of service, he was single. This time he was away from his wife, the former Suzanne Gresham, of Fayetteville, NC, and his young sons, Nathan and Ryan. Particularly difficult was his inability to take advantage of the leave policy that allowed enlisted personnel to go home. “I led the briefings for everybody to go home, knowing I wouldn’t be going,” he says. It was also difficult being the brunt of emotions when the number of soldiers allowed to go home were reduced.

Surprisingly, communication with his family was relatively easy, he says. “It was very difficult during the first four months, but then I could receive emails daily and make weekly phone calls,” he explains. In the 365 days he was away, he wrote home on all but five of them. Before he left, Cox bought GI Joe figures for his sons to help enable them to relate to what he was doing. Then he sent them numerous photos of real GI Joes.

During his 11 months of duty, the 180th Transportation Battalion to which he was assigned had numerous injuries but no combat-related deaths. He did lead a memorial service for one traffic fatality. However, the trauma related to war and being away from family required him to spend 80 percent of his time counseling troops. “I averaged five counseling sessions a day,” Cox says. “They ranged from interpersonal and family issues to military policy and regulatory guidance to spiritual issues.”

One chaplain’s assistant came to him after she found a soldier with an M-16 in his mouth ready to blow himself up. Through their counseling and the assistance of mental health professionals, Cox says the soldier made it home in six months and had become very interested in the Bible. “Seeing his progression was a very rewarding experience,” he says. Cox adds that 40 percent of the soldiers have no religious affiliation at all and many of the counseling concerns were related to poor decisions that the soldiers made while they were in difficult circumstances away from home.

While at Camp New York in Kuwait, he led five services a day at first. When some of the services were consolidated, his preaching load was reduced and continued to be lower at the other bases. He also supervised some denominational specific services, including two Catholic Masses and a Latter Day Saints service at Camp New York.

“I was grateful that my preaching professor at Campbell University Divinity School told us to have a year’s worth of sermons planned out before we take the first position,” Cox says matter-of-factly. “When I deployed to Iraq, I had no professional resources available to me.”

He also explains that he was well prepared in many other ways, including a well-rounded knowledge of church polity.


Bulletin 0172- 06/02/04

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