This week we sat down with Lt. Gregory Kearns, ship's chaplain, USS Kearsarge, Recruit Training Command (RTC).

1. Bulletin: How long have you been at RTC and have long have you been at USS Kearsarge as ship's chaplain?

Kearns: "I arrived to RTC in November 2014 and have been at this ship since August."

2. Bulletin: Briefly describe some of the duties and responsibilities of a ship's chaplain.

Kearns: "Our primary responsibility is recruit and staff resiliency. So, it's our job to care for the whole Sailor. We have individual counseling sessions with recruits, Recruit Division Commanders (RDC), staff members, whoever needs it. We're expected to deck plate with divisions which means walking the decks and visiting their compartments and spaces and seeing them in their environment. We also participate in the recruit's Physical Fitness Assessments running with them and encouraging them along the way."

3. Bulletin: What is something you like best about your job?

Kearns: "Seeing recruits find the strength to get through issues. It's one thing being homesick, but there are also recruits who come here from all sorts of family backgrounds and personal struggles they've gone through, and RTC tends to bring that all to the surface. Watching people experience a transition and find their strength and a sense of who they are."

4. Bulletin: Describe a difficult issue you may have to address.

Kearns: "Balancing the four aspects of what we do. First, taking care of individual Sailors and giving them enough quality time with the chaplain. Second, having enough quality time for deck plating where we're not just walking in and out of the compartment really fast but we're actually spending some time with them. Third, quality time with RDCs as one of the best ways to care for our recruits is to care for those who take care of them on a daily basis. Lastly is self-care; I can't have what matters, where it matters, and when it matters, if I'm not appropriately taking care of myself. We have to balance the four of those and that's the biggest difficulty for us because there are a lot of demands for the chaplains at RTC."

5. Bulletin: Why did you specifically seek out this position here at RTC?

Kearns: "I accepted orders to come here, but I have found it's a fruitful ministry and a wonderful place to be. I'd love to come back some day and a little later in my career when I can bring more of that experience to the command. I think that some of our Sailors who have been out in the Fleet who come back as chaplains have some extra assets they can bring to the table for the younger ones. It's been a great experience for me so far."

6. Bulletin: For those recruits who are homesick and seek out your guidance, what do you advise to them?

Kearns: "For some of them it comes back to asking them why they are here and having them step back to find perspective. A lot of times RTC becomes a tunnel vision bubble and so they're focused only on being here today. Having them step back and asking those greater questions and what brought them here often times brings them back to why they are here. For many of them during the first couple of weeks, there's a lot of stress on whether or not they're going to graduate on the day they were told they would graduate, which they didn't know until they arrived here. Once they step back and gain perspective, they oftentimes find that they have a reason to stay. It has to be their choice to stay."

7. Bulletin: Any advice to other chaplains contemplating coming to work at RTC?

Kearns: "Connect with a local church or faith group immediately upon reporting. Also, before you get here, take a refresher course in either pastoral counseling or counseling techniques. I did such a course and it completely revitalized the counseling I was doing. We see anywhere from 25 to 50 recruits weekly. For me, From December 2014 to May I saw 463, and from May to the present, so far I've already seen 467. RTC is not like other bases. You need something else during the week where you're not just here with a group of people that changes every eight weeks. That was a big shift for me being a priest from a parish to here where my "parish" changes every eight weeks when there is a complete turnover of new recruits. It's difficult when you come from other commands and have your own parish for your grounding. For the recruits, we're their grounding while they're here because we remind them of home. For us, if we don't have some other place to go then we don't have that grounding. Find a place of worship aside from here."

8. Bulletin: When your time is up at RTC what will you take away from here?

Kearns: "RTC has definitely approved my ability to counsel. It's really easy to get bogged down with hearing the same issues and it becomes a taxing situation to stay present for every Sailor. Some of these stories sound the same but it is the first time the recruit has gone through it. That discipline of being present all the time no matter what's going on for me and doing the self-care to be able to do that, it's improved my ability to counsel and hopefully that helps the Fleet because I'm sure once I get back out there, I'm going to hear a lot of the same stories too."

9. Bulletin: How does one's faith help them through boot camp?

Kearns: "For some it's really about finding a sense of who they are within the world. That comes with faith, but it can come without a notion of divinity. That's where the chaplain comes into play. A good portion comes down to the chaplain helping them find who they are, find their center and from that now they have something to fight for. What we do is important and the faith part comes in and helps them identify why that's important and why this is something they want for themselves. It's not just what kind of benefits the Navy is going to give them, but why this sacrifice matters."

10. Bulletin: "What gives you the greatest satisfaction in your job?

Kearns: "Seeing a recruit in the early time of boot camp who struggles with whatever it was and then seeing them graduate. It's a personal transformation and watching them find that trajectory, that's the best part of job. I don't ever get to see the end point and from the scriptural adage of 'someone planted it, someone waters it and someone else harvests it,' I'm the waterer. Someone else planted it - that's the recruits' parents and RDCs - I'm the waterer, and someone else is going to harvest them. Some commanding officer out there is going to benefit from having these Sailors."

For more news from Recruit Training Command, visit www.navy.mil/.