Trinity Western University

In a few days I'll be visiting Trinity Western University for a symposium on the historical Jesus featuring distinguished lecturer Bishop N.T. Wright. I'm pretty pumped. I've been looking forward to this for months. Vancouver is a very scenic and urban area, with mountains, ocean, forest, the works.

I'll be leaving Katie Sunday evening and coming back to her Friday morning. The interesting part will be what I do once I get to Vancouver National Airport! You see, I picked the cheapest flight I could, which arrives around 1am local time. So in some way shape or form, I'll have to make it to Trinity Western that morning, which is about 42 kilometer (26 miles) away. That's about a marathon! Now, I could get a rental car, but that costs a lot, like more than $200, so no. I could rent a taxi, but that'll be around $100. So I've opted for the cheap plan, walking...and/or buses. According to Google Maps, it can be done in about 3 hours for $5 with public transit. We'll see how it goes! They can give me a ride back, so I don't have to worry about that. I'm not worried, mainly because my friend Mike Schneider and I traveled around Mexico in places 1) more crowded 2) much more dangerous 3) without any real idea where we were going. And we lived.

I plan on attending their MA level classes while there and talking to most, if not, all of the faculty about their program and opinions on certain subjects. I've read up on their curricula vitae and have some comments and questions for each of them. It sounds like a great school and I'll be making the most of this opportunity.

Now, you may be asking yourself, why or how is David going? Well, to make a medium-size story short, Aaron West and I went to several lectures on the Dead Sea Scrolls last year while they were on display at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Both Martin Abegg and Peter Flint, professors at TWU, spoke and I had the chance to eat breakfast with Professor Abegg (he invited and paid!). I had to chance to tell him about Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS). After seeing how nerdy I can get in conversion in talking about Greek, Hebrew, and ancient texts and manuscripts, he invited me to this conference. He said, referring to the faculty, "We're normal people with abnormal interests." Sounds like me!