{"id":30723,"date":"2012-02-08T02:19:34","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T02:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/rns_chaplains_hear_call_to_serve_god_while_serving_country\/"},"modified":"2012-02-08T02:19:34","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T02:19:34","slug":"rns_chaplains_hear_call_to_serve_god_while_serving_country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=30723","title":{"rendered":"(RNS) Chaplains Hear Call to Serve God While Serving Country"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Growing up in Kuwait, Asif Balbale thought he wanted to become a chemical engineer. He never imagined enlisting in the U.S. Navy, much less becoming an imam.<\/p>\n<p>Balbale got his engineering degree after immigrating to the U.S. at age 21. With jobs hard to come by, he tried to enlist in the Army, but didn&#8217;t weigh enough. Instead, he met the Navy&#8217;s minimum requirements.<\/p>\n<p>He was sworn in as a U.S. citizen in 2005 while deployed aboard the USS Boxer. Intending to apply for an officer program, Balbale, 31, mistakenly emailed a recruiter for the chaplain corps.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;God, I think, had better plans for me,&#8221; Balbale said, looking back.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ethicsdaily.com\/chaplains-hear-call-to-serve-god-while-serving-country-cms-19220\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Growing up in Kuwait, Asif Balbale thought he wanted to become a chemical engineer. He never imagined enlisting in the U.S. Navy, much less becoming an imam. Balbale got his engineering degree after immigrating to the U.S. at age 21.<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=30723\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,39,40,143,435,184,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-life-church-life","category-culture-watch","category-economics-politics","category-defense-national-security-military","category-ministry-of-the-ordained","category-parish-ministry","category-religion-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}