PatrickMead.net

On our last full day at sea, the seas had moderated quite a bit and I was right as rain. We docked at the private island owned by Holland America/Carnival Cruise Line early in the morning and it was time to hit the beach. Holland America is a much more refined and dignified line than [...]

Modern ships don’t swing about violently as did ships even twenty years ago… but there can still be substantial movement in high wind conditions. High waves can cause the ship to rock, but it is the wind that is the culprit. Look at a modern cruise ship and you can see why: they are huge, [...]

Our next island wasn’t far away. Just under fifty miles east of San Juan are the US Virgin Islands. They got that name indirectly. Columbus actually named them Santa Ursula y las Once Mil Vírgenes after the 11,000 virgins who devoted themselves to St. Ursala (she was killed by Huns for refusing to marry a [...]

On the third day of the cruise, we sailed into San Juan Bay. I had never been to Puerto Rico and had always wanted to go. I have a fascination with the Spanish language and with the cultures found in Spanish speaking areas. I have long wanted to go do a month long immersion course [...]

I meant to post the first of our cruise blogs over here but it ended up at Tentpegs. I was having great difficulty getting the ship’s internet to work at anything more than worm speed plus it didn’t like posting to Wordpress and I had to find a workaround for that. After awhile, I decided [...]

A different kind of story today. Kami and I leave tomorrow. I am still battling a bad cold so prayers are certainly welcome! If we can connect, we will post an update here. If not, remember to be good to each other. Be aware that this blog is under a spam attack. Thirty more were [...]

A two-fer today! What value! And it has nothing to do with the nominations at Theobloggers for Christian bloggers of the year. Nope. Not a thing.
http://nominate.theobloggers.org
I would have thought that there wasn’t much mystery about what happened to Judas Iscariot, but some writers — such as Bart Erhman — try to paint the Bible as [...]

Let’s take a quick break from the apostles series. I’ll try to post another one of those before Kami and I fly out on Friday for an 8 day cruise in the Eastern Caribbean. Pray for me as I am fighting a sore throat and cold — my first in almost a year. Bad timing!
If [...]

He is called Simon the Canaanite or Simon the Zealot… and he isn’t Simon Peter. Who is this apostle and what happened to him after the ascension of Jesus? We know that he, along with four other apostles, spent time evangelizing Armenia (modern day Turkey, bits of Syria, and bits of Iran). However, he didn’t [...]

Oh, boy. Just when you thought it was safe to move on away from all that James, James, and James stuff (not to mention the Matthew/Matthias stuff. D’oh! I just mentioned it!), we come into the Thaddeus Zone.
Here’s the problem: he is given several names in Scripture — Judas, Jude, and Thaddeus. He is also [...]