Holy Beans: Coffee for your spiritual wellness

Fort Bragg, N.C. - Family members from the 98th Civil Affairs Battalion, 95th Civil Affairs Brigade, Special Operations, Airborne, attend Roast 4 Soldiers, a coffee roasting event, hosted by the battalion chaplain on Aug. 22, 2020.

Chaplain (Capt.) Jueun Kim, 98th Civil Affairs Battalion, hosted the event which was designed for the spouses of deployed Soldiers, to do something a little more personal and unique for the teams that are currently deployed.

“As part of doing Soldier ministry and at the same time trying to look out for the families back home. Before putting on this event I said to myself, how can I promote healthy relationships with Soldiers and their spouses to help them both cope while they are deployed,” said Chaplain Kim.

These types of events are important because as military spouses that are constantly in and out its easy to start and feel like your living separate lives, but events like this helps you to become part of his world and meet some of the people that they interact with on a daily basis and learn a little about the areas that they deploy to, said Courtney Casiano, a spouse from the 98th Civil Affairs Battalion.

The event started off with family members learning how to roast coffee beans.

“Chaplain Kim brought several coffee roasting kits and showed us how the roasting process goes then we went ahead and roasted our own coffee beans,” Courtney said.

After the spouses roasted the coffee beans, Chaplain Kim took a Polaroid picture with them and the end results of their experience.

Courtney said, “What’s great about this event is that, not a lot of spouses had the opportunity to get together while our Soldiers are deployed due to COVID, but this event has given us an opportunity to meet and get to know each other.”

Then the event concluded with family members creating cards to be included with their photograph and hand-crafted roasts that will be sent to their loved ones who are currently deployed.

One thing that particularly makes this a unique event is that our battalion is aligned with South Command, which operates in Central and South America where a lot of coffee beans are grown, Kim said.

The 150 pounds of coffee beans, donated by an organization called “Operation Deployed,” which were grown in Honduras by a non-profit organization, Mission Lazarus, which operates a coffee farm out of San Lazzaro.