Michaelhenn.com

It’s been a long time since I blogged as my friend Brant told me the other day. Since the last update, I have been ordained (I’m a real pastor now) and have been installed at Trinity Lutheran in Hicksville, NY. Don’t let the name fool you; Hicksville is one of the most developed areas of Long Island with a population of around 41,000.

All in all, things are really good here. I am enjoying my work and I love the area. It’s great to be able to take a short train ride over to Times Square or Central Park. Jess took this picture of The Statue of Liberty from the boat tour. She took the tour the other day and Sandra Bullock was on the boat next to her talking with her friends and imitating Sarah Palin. New York’s a crazy place.

One of the nice things the seminary has done for us this year is to build us a new student center. They sorta had to seeming as they made our old student center into an office building. But the new Wartburg student center is a pretty nice place. There are a few comfy chairs, a giant flat screen TV, and six imac computers.

One of the things that used to be in the old student center was a little white board where the students would keep a countdown to call day. In our nice new high class student center a little white board wouldn’t look very attractive. So the powers that be requested that Ed Tech make a countdown to call day screen saver. Being one of the Ed Tech student developers, this assignment fell to me. This is what I came up with:

I am pretty happy with it. It’s pretty cool to see a screen saver that I wrote, up on all six of the imacs in the student center.

I came across this picture while looking through the old pictures in my cell phone. I had almost forgot how small Sumiko was when I got her. For those of you who spend any time at my place know that she is, well, a little bigger now.

Recently, we had German Days here at the seminary. Unfortunately, it’s not the Octoberfest that you are thinking of, it’s more of a german symposium (theological conference.) The funny thing was that they hung a giant german flag over the entrance to the building where they were meeting, and it made me feel like we were filming the next Indiana Jones movie here on campus.

One of my greatest joys over my vicarage was the Tech Club that I started at the school. It all started when I realized that all these computer and technology questions that the students are asking me before and after class, probably mean that this is an aspect of their education that they are willing to grow in, but lack a teacher. (Of course I say this not to criticize, most small schools have trouble teaching technology for a variety of reasons.) So I announced that we would start a Tech Club that would meet every other week after school. We would dissect computers (and other devices) and see how they work. We even covered how GPS technologies work and staged a GPS guided treasure hunt. The Tech Club turned out to be a huge success with over 50% of the 5th - 8th grades showing up. Tech Club became an institution in itself and I could not have been happier.

In one of the last meetings we had, we talked about how batteries work. I pulled out the old citrus battery science experiment. For those of you who are not familiar with that one, it involves creating a battery by inserting a piece of copper and a piece of zinc into a lemon or lime. The acid in the fruit acts as a battery acid and creates electrical flow. We connected a chain of lime batteries together and modded a solar calculator to run off them. It worked great! The kids were amazed that a piece of fruit could power a calculator and a small speaker.

Man, I really miss Tech Club.

The only thing I can think of when I see this picture of our cat Jager is that line from tommy boy when he is singing “Fat man in a little coat…”

She used to lie in the basket a lot when she was little, and is now probably wondering why the basket is shrinking.

Awhile back I put a “Pizza and Game Night at the Vicar’s House” party up for auction at a school fundraiser. To my delight and surprise, it sold for $190. Which makes me think I need to go into the party throwing business. But anyway here are a few pictures from that night.

We had halo 2 running on the xbox, projected up on a big screen. It was pretty cool and I was sad to take it down the day after the party….

I even had DDR hooked up in the kitchen.

Starcraft was running on a few of the computers. Starcraft is really big with this group, which is cool because I can literally say, “you were still in diapers when I was playing starcraft…” (maybe not quite, but close enough)

The Wii was on my TV in the living room. The wii seemed to be the favorite, but that’s no surprise. Ever since I got the wii, my 360 has developed an inferiority complex.

It was not long before the guys found my nerf gun. I am still finding random darts around my house.

And of course, everyone loves cake and ice cream.

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks to Zach Meador (the guy with the cake) who won the auction! Hope you guys all had a good time!