I am a nerd.  By that I mean that I like school, and tend to do fairly well at it when I buckle down and do the work that I should.  By nerd I don’t mean socially awkward and incapable of making friends.  Today was my first day of school for this academic year and [...]

Last weekend I was at a family reunion in Laughlin, Nevada.  The common ancestor was my wife’s paternal great grandparents – the Mitchells.  This was Sheri’s grandma’s parents: Henry Mitchell was the great grandfather’s name.  They lived in Michigan.  Their daughter was Bee – my wife’s grandma.  She came to California with her family including [...]

Today I’ve been here in the office preparing to leave Our Savior’s.  It’s difficult to clean things up and prepare them for the next person.  Who knows what someone will find useful, relevant, or completely frivolous? I found pictures and videos of young ones from seven years ago.  They look so different from who they [...]

Today the Theology Pirate is a master of efficiency.  With a computer at my disposal I can email and organize like it is no body’s business.  The family and I have been house-sitting in San Clemente for almost a week now and today I think is the first day that we woke up to good [...]

If you were to die, who would you give your books to?  Recently a friend of ours died.  I’ll call him “John.”  He was quite young, and his death was unexpected.  His wife, who is his only survivor, wanted to give his personal library on Biblical Studies to me.  I was very honored to receive [...]

Lots of updates for the theology pirate aka Wesley Menke.  It’s been a very big August.  If you’ve been reading along you know that the high school youth group from Our Savior’s in San Clemente went river rafting.  It was an extremely good trip.  In other big news Sheri and I gave notice of our [...]

From here I can see the American River.  I am sitting at a picnic table at our camp perched up high enough that I see over our tent and onto the low flowing water of the early morning American River.  In a few hours this low flow will be transformed into a rushing torrent that [...]

Wednesday was a day of many miles and sights on our 2010 high school youth group trip.  We started the day in the dense fog of Berkeley which condensates on huge Redwood and Fir trees so that it seemed like rain under the trees but not out in the open.  A recent graduate of Pacific [...]

YEAH is Youth Emergency Assistance Housing, a ministry to homeless young people in Berkeley, California.  TAY is Transitional Age Youth, that is the population that makes up the clientele at YEAH.  They are young people ages 18 – 25. In America, when we say, “youth,” I think most people think ages 12 – 18, but [...]

Today we drove along the California coast with our high school youth group from Our Savior’s.  We stayed the night last night at California Lutheran University.  We played a totally awesome game of Ultimate Frisbee.  Yesterday, it seems like so much further ago in the past, we went to the Griffith Park observatory and gazed [...]