Back from Portland

My wife and I have returned from our five week trip to our home town of Portland, Oregon. You can see some pictures from our trip on my new Flickr widget (though for some reason it is only showing the pictures I most recently uploaded to Flickr; I’m working on fixing this). We had a wonderful time in Oregon, as usual. We saw many friends, ate great food, drank excellent craft beer, saw lots of movies, and read some really good books. I also bought my dream lighter. While my first calling is always to proclaim Christ, if I can convert everyone to at least take one trip to Oregon, I will consider it a life well lived.

Comments

Lee said…
My wife and I spent some time in Oregon a few years ago - Crater Lake and Oregon Cave to be specific. I thought it was fantastic.
Glad to have you back!
Anonymous said…
I have been to McMinnville, OR twice for meetings (about 10 years apart) of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. Unfortunately, time did not allow me to do much sightseeing elsewhere. What I saw was beautiful.

But how did you grow up Republican in Oregon???
Michael,

That topic is actually worth a separate post. But the sad reality is that because of the "liberal" politics of Oregon, the evangelical presence in Portland tends to be reactionary, and thus very conservative, even fundamentalist. The church situation in Portland is thus not nearly as good as it could or should be. The situation is seen in very black-and-white terms, and this has led to a kind of ideological captivity in the churches there. It's probably similar in other parts of the country, but I have never seen anything comparable to it in the other places I have lived.