The U.S. military has granted Dandan Elementary School principal Jonas Barcinas one week to prepare for his 18-month deployment order for Iraq.<\/p>\n
Barcinas said that, instead of leaving last Sunday, he is allowed to stay for another week and eventually depart on Sunday, Sept. 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is precious time for me. I\u2019m really grateful because I still have this week to do my personal errands and put my school in order,\u201d said Barcinas.<\/p>\n
He said that he still has mixed emotions \u201cbut at least now I have peace because I\u2019m certain when I\u2019m leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barcinas said he intends to call for a general meeting with students and possibly with parents to say goodbye and ask for their prayer and support.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soldiers, we need the community\u2019s prayer at this time of conflict. What we want is peace and harmony and protection and safety for the whole group,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Barcinas will be joining other CNMI reservists on a six-month intensive training in Hawaii and Louisiana prior to their one-year deployment in Iraq.<\/p>\n
Pentagon has decided to tap military reserve personnel to reinforce U.S. military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
But while other CNMI reservists had gone for training in Hawaii last month, returned, and departed again for the 18-month deployment, Barcinas had been left behind, prompting him to assume that he would not be needed. He said it was a shock to him when received a notice from the military in Hawaii two weekends ago that he needed to pack up and leave on Aug. 29 for Iraq assignment.<\/p>\n
Barcinas had sought written endorsement from legislators as well PSS for him to be granted a two-week travel delay.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so happy even with a one-week extension,\u201d he said yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. military has granted Dandan Elementary School principal Jonas Barcinas one week to prepare for his 18-month deployment order for Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}