Nearly 7,000 miles away in a suburb of Cincinnati, Julie Jeffcott woke up their four children -- triplet preschool boys and a teenage son. She dressed the children, packed lunches, sent in checks for school pictures. Then she headed to work as a kindergarten teacher.

While her husband was deployed for 14 months, Julie handled -- for the first time -- the family finances. The triplets, only four years old when Daddy left, didn't understand why their father was gone and when he would return, so Julie played a game with the alphabet. They studied one letter for two weeks. When they got to Z, Daddy would be home.

On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, the casualties continue to mount. There are the hard statistics: nearly 4,000 troops and about 60,000 Iraqi civilians dead. At least 40,000 wounded soldiers. One hundred forty-five suicides.

Then there are the casualties that are harder to quantify: the families left behind, with no one to call when the pipes burst or the furnace breaks. The financial hardship when the breadwinner leaves for a year. The returning soldier who looks for roadside bombs on the interstate.

"It's hard transitioning back into your real life," says Joseph Jeffcott. "I was nervous around crowds. I would drive too fast, always looking over my shoulder, afraid to be in any closed-in situation…In talking with other veterans, I realized that I'm not the only one who feels this way. In my own unit, we've had a suicide. Drug and alcohol users. There are places to turn, but most of them aren't good. If I hadn't had my faith and the whole church standing behind me, it could have led to alcohol, drugs and problems with my wife and family."

Jeffcott and a group of 50 volunteers from St. Timothy's, Anderson Township, are determined to provide soldiers and their families another place to turn. On Veteran's Day 2007, the congregation launched a new ministry: B.O.O.T.S. -- the Benevolent Order of Those Serving.

"The boot to the military is the most important thing," says Jeffcott. "You have boot camp. When you arrive, you're called a boot. When you're in country, they say, 'You're boots on ground.' If you don't have boots on, you can't survive. I felt that boots would be a good thing to use, and the military guys could relate to that."

The ministry's goal is to provide financial, spiritual and physical help to families while a father or mother is deployed and to help returning soldiers re-integrate into their lives.  The Rev. Roger Greene, rector of St. Timothy's, introduced a resolution at November's convention of the Diocese of Southern Ohio, calling for congregations and individuals to extend support to military personnel. Delegates overwhelmingly passed the measure.

Greene said he did some research in the Cincinnati area and found that there's no coordinated effort -- not by the military, veterans groups or churches.

"In the church, through the church, we have what's needed for people to recover and deal with this," says Greene. "I've not served in Iraq. I've not been to war. I can't imagine how much this affects a human being. What does it mean to both have your life threatened and to take a life? How does a family survive while their mother or father is deployed?

"What the church has is God's good news. We have people who want to care for the families left behind. We have experienced God's power to raise the dead. We have a God who wants to do more than we can dream or imagine, a God who can deal with all of this crap."

Dedicated to service
Jeffcott joined the Naval Reserves in 2003. He already had done six years in the Marine Corps after college. He was assigned to a special operations unit in Missouri. The deployment call came in January of 2006.

He and his wife pored over their finances; a business banker, Jeffcott always had handled the bills. They were one of the lucky couples -- Jeffcott's employer, Chase Bank, covered the difference between his military pay and regular salary.

"While I was gone for 12 months, my wife became head of the household. Mommy was the all-knowing figure," Jeffcott says. "After I'd been leading troops and my wife had been the leading family, we had to figure out how to bring all that back into one cohesive group. Without the faith of God and my relationship with Roger [Greene], I don't know that I could have done it."

Jeffcott grew up Episcopalian, and they were married by Greene at St. Timothy's. But over the years, the Jeffcotts became Easter-Christmas church attenders. Before Jeffcott left for Iraq, he talked with a friend who had a strong faith and was part of a men's prayer group. Jeffcott saw how much strength the friend had. After he deployed, Jeffcott joined a similar men's prayer group.

On his rare days off, Jeffcott gave back to the people of Iraq. He ran some fundraising drives and played with kids in a local orphanage.

"I went to war and found God," he says. "Crazy, huh? God gave me the strength, courage and faith that I would be OK."

When he returned home, Jeffcott went straight to St. Timothy's to pray. Two Sundays later, during a regular laying-on of hands during the worship service, Jeffcott felt God calling him to do something more for military families. He talked to Greene about the call.

"When Joe announced the new ministry, he had people lined up out to Beechmont Avenue," says Greene. "There are so many people who want to help. Joe's aware that he's still healing, but he really feels this is God's call to him. There are a lot of people out there dying on the vine. How do we find them? How do we go there?"

About the time Jeffcott returned home, Donna Crenshaw's oldest son John was deployed for his first tour as an Army reservist. His job: route sanitation, which means he sweeps for roadside bombs.

For months, Crenshaw cried every day. At her church, St. Timothy's, she would sob from her pew when his name was said during the Prayers of the People. Always a woman of strong faith, Crenshaw decided one day to turn over her fears to God.

"I was in the pew when Joe Jeffcott spoke during church about B.O.O.T.S. I thought, ‘That's it. That's what I can do,'" Crenshaw says. "Churches have outreach in so many areas -- helping the homeless and giving people food to eat. But this is such a great need. The men and women give up so much, and they do it out of love for their country. These are real patriots."

Crenshaw sees the need especially acute among reservists who don't live on a military base, who have to leave their jobs and families for deployment. Often the person left behind can't afford to work outside the home because of childcare issues. They frequently face big cuts in pay, and they feel isolated. They've lost their handyman and partner.

"We have to help our brothers and sisters," says Crenshaw. "If we don't do it, who's going to?"

Different opinions, a common mission
The volunteers at B.O.O.T.S. run the gamut in political persuasion. But not once has politics come into play with their ministry.

"Here is an area of common mission. We're not condoning the war; we're not supporting it. But we're saying that the least we can do is minister to those in profound need," says Greene. "This is an example of finding ways to serve together, despite our differences of opinion."

B.O.O.T.S. has adopted the platoon of Spc. John Crenshaw. They sent Christmas greetings and grocery gifts cards to the spouses of soldiers in his unit, as well as prepaid calling cards to the troops. They also have helped spouses with veterans' benefits, household repairs, childcare, tax preparation and transportation.

B.O.O.T.S. volunteers rehabbed a house that John and his new wife, Summer, purchased before his deployment. The group finished the work before John's two-week leave in January.

When he came home, his mother could see the profound impact of the war on her son. Most of the time, he didn't leave the house. He was extremely quiet. He didn't drive.
But by the final few days, he started to relax a bit.

That's part of the lesson that B.O.O.T.S. wants to share with families as they prepare for the homecoming of their loved ones. Re-integration is tough and slow.

"These guys are in Iraq one day, and the next day, they're sitting in the living room," Crenshaw says.

But with the support of B.O.O.T.S. and through faith, these returning men and women can readjust to life.

"The care packages that so many congregations send are important, and we loved getting them," says Jeffcott. "But I'm hoping that churches see that there is so much more we can do. This is about the mental, spiritual and physical wellbeing of the troops themselves. We're here to make sure we don't have a repeat of Vietnam, with hundreds of thousands of men lost and on the street…. We need to bring the spiritual aspect into the re-entry because I know that I couldn't have done it without my faith."

For more information about B.O.O.T.S., including how to start a chapter in your congregation), contact St. Timothy's Episcopal church at 513-474-4445 or boots@sainttimothys.com