Malcolm Dykes: The Case of the Outdated Juice

You are looking at what was assumed to be a consumable commodity from our tiny PX here on tiny Camp Chabelley Air Force Base at Djibouti Africa.

The camp is an outlying FOB or what is called an extension of a major base as ours.

Established March 2010 by our American Armed Forces, it was first a French Army installation but now serves our Air Force as a drone airfield with the larger Navy facility, Camp Lemonier a few miles away.

Thus, there is no need for a large AAFES Exchange Store that most bases have.

Ours is a small metal conex with the bare minimum of commodities as razors, soap, across the counter meds like aspirin and a few snacks and beverages.

I usually buy a bag of roasted pistachios, one of my favorite snacks and a 16 0z. of cranberry juice when I go in.

Today, my juice and nuts were gone so I stopped in to replenish only to find the nuts but no cranberry juice in the small cooler.

The young soldier dad, SGT Harvey Sisdon, stepped to the refrigerated conex next door to get my juice but called my attention to the expiration date on the case as it was over a year old.

With a sigh I just said, "I'll settle for the apple juice instead back in the PX cooler, so we returned and as he was ringing me up he checked the expiration date and it was expired as well.

He said, "You know what, I can't sell expired products, but nobody said I couldn't give them away."

So, he handed me the jug and said, "Please don't drink it if it tastes a little rank."

I agreed and walked out back across the drive to my USO recreation tent, one of 4 tents we call our MWR (Morale Welfare and Recreation) facility that I am a manager of.

The other tents have our strength conditioning equipment like any other fitness centers back home, state of the art machines.

As I returned to do my duties of greeting the lonely soldiers and aiding them as any chaplain should, it dawned on me to go back and assure the good SGT I was going to be alright regardless.

I stepped back in his little canteen and said, "Brother, I am a long-time pastor and minister of 54 years and you don't have time for me to tell you how many miracles these two eyes have witnessed and backed up by the Bible.

One of those passages reads like this: "and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them" (Mark 16: 18).

I've drank a lot worse things than an out-of-date jug of apple juice, you ain't got nothing to worry about!"

He laughed a good-hearted laugh and I left him smiling like a wave on a slop jar!

But it's true.

I am here to build the faith in these lonely young men and women in uniform far-far from home and anyway I can do that, I do.

Even with a jug of outdated apple juice!

God bless you and God bless America.

Bro. Mike

(p.s. The juice was just fine)