BENCHMARK thanks Chaplain Erik Alfsen, U.S. Army, for taking the time to share his experiences with us. *The views presented are those of the speaker and do not necessarily represent the views of DoD or its components.*

Reflections on Resilience-Building Retreats

As I reflect back, there are so many stories we could tell and more to tell in future years but just some that come to mind… 

In 2011, that first trip, we’re getting ready for a nine-month deployment, we’re in the Smoky Mountains in the fall and we’re walking along the trails on a ridgeline and one of my Junior NCOs, we’ll call him Robby, starts speaking, talking about the fact that he’s been thinking about God’s plan. He’s a believer, but he’s been thinking about God’s plan for his life and feels God nudging him in a certain direction after the Army. This conversation leads to many more in the following deployment but it started there, it started out walking on a trail and, fourteen years later, Robby’s out of the Army and he’s a Pastor in a church in vocational ministry. 

In 2015, we’re doing a sea-kayaking adventure down the Georgia coast and camping on some of the barrier islands of Georgia. The sun is setting in over the marsh and it’s casting this golden glow over the water and our camp is set up amongst the driftwood with the hammocks slung in the downed trees and the campfire’s crackling and under the stars in the sky, the sound of the waves in the background, one of the Rangers there, Derrick, decides to open up and he starts speaking, and his voice is steady but it’s filled with emotion and he says, “you know, I grew up in church, but somewhere along the way, I drifted. Maybe it was the last two deployments, maybe it was life in the barracks, the people I was around, but I’ve just been feeling lost for a long time.” And we all leaned in, feeling the weight of his words, as he continued, that he’d been feeling this pull, that even on this trip that he was feeling like God had been reaching out to him and so he shared about his personal struggles with addiction and the weight of shame that he was feeling, but his story resonated with all of us. So we sat there around that campfire sharing our own fears, our own hopes, finding solace in these shared experiences and in the journey back to faith. And today, Derrick’s a fully devoted follower of Christ and he’s bringing other people to faith around him in a way that makes me feel bad about myself, frankly. But it was in moments like that that remind us of that power of connection.

Just a year ago maybe, BENCHMARK’s hosting a parent-child event in my old unit, in a job that I left, where Rangers are taking their kids on an outdoor adventure and they’re investing in them, they’re making memories with them, they’re laying down a foundation for their entire lifetime and their future, and they’re building memories that are gonna last a lifetime. And one of my friends is driving away and his kids are in the back seat and they’re immediately talking about next year, coming back next year and how they can’t wait for the next trip, the next BENCHMARK trip. 

As somebody who’s served as a Chaplain for more than a decade and a half, with a lot of time deployed to combat, having counselled and cared for more Soldiers and their families than I can remember, and having witnessed the impacts of loss first-hand, having lived through and experienced the losses of suicide, having seen human suffering in the terrors of war, having experienced hardship, I can tell you that there is no outside organization or group that I think, personally, is better equipped than BENCHMARK Adventure Ministries to give Soldiers an opportunity to engage their spiritual core in a meaningful and a life-changing way.