Good news, West-Coasters! You don't have to wake up to a tsunami! Hooray!

Yikes, Hec! That is crazy. I'm confident you were not the only one enraged.

Congrats Amy!! So good to hear. And great to hear things are going well with your new job, Sumi. And a new position for Jess! 2018 looking sweeter.

Aragorn Doing Lots of Cool Things in the Hottest Way Possible

Excellent plan!

I have to hand it to the 9th grade English teacher. He has assigned so many papers that they are finally getting down the basic skill of banging out a paper.

That is good to hear. There is apparently no concern whatsoever for the need to be able to write in our schools here. Not exaggerating, the students here have no clue. They think a 3 page paper as a senior project is horrifically burdensome.

That is good news!

Young Life is a cult, I swear. I remember it from when I was in high school and the kids were constantly recruiting, with "God Squad" written all over their notebooks. Sara got invited to something just this year, and it got a voracious NO from me, not that she was really interested.

I like the positive turns 2018 is taking. Baby steps, right?

Matilda came home from school with a letter and a form to attend an Evangelical Christian Camp (Young Life) given to her by one of her teachers, who was also recruiting two of her "worldly" friends.

From a TEACHER? Oh hell no.

So my high school student just had to write a paper for class and I am super impressed at the way they just sat down and wrote it, no stress, no fuss, and a pretty good essay too.

That is awesome. But F is in high school??

I am beginning to wonder if I have something really wrong, I'm just so sleepy all the time this weekend. I feel like I could go to bed right now and sleep through until 6 am. That's not right.

Are you still recovering/decompressing from your trip, maybe?

That does sound like a very sketchy group.

I've got to call my Doctor's office today. Medication price went up 2000% so I need to let'em know I won't be taking it anymore.

I'm confident you were not the only one enraged.

I've gone down the rabbit hole on Christian Cult forums (people who leave them).

Young Life is operating strictly by their playbook here by gaining access to students by being volunteer coaches and substitute teachers (as this guy is). They specifically target popular athletes to form cadres of little born-again study groups, and recruit outward from there.

Their philosophy is that by age eighteen it is too difficult to convert somebody to become a fundamentalist Christian, so they try to do an end-around on parents of "wordly" children. They soft-sell the Jesus up front and get these kids off to fun-time camps and then they use coercive cult mind-control techniques to indoctrinate the kids.

They feel justified in abrogating parental authority because they are saving souls.

The creepiest part is - this guy is on the Young Life staff and he was certainly placed at Matilda's school to do exactly this. He was the Asst. Coach (volunteer gig) on a successful soccer team and is slated to become the full-time paid soccer coach next year. The soccer is completely incidental.

This is not a slip-up by somebody who blurred the line between teaching and their church. This is strategic, targeted and predatory.

I've contacted a number of other parents and their kids have receive the letters as well. I'm going to march it up the line if they don't fire this fucker (he's not in the teacher's union - yet - so it shouldn't be a procedural issue).

I will be that asshole standing in front of the school with a megaphone and fliers if I have to.

But first I will contact the ACLU and bludgeon them on social media if the school is not responsive. I will run this fucker out on a rail.

But first I will contact the ACLU and bludgeon them on social media if the school is not responsive. I will run this fucker out on a rail.

Go get 'em.

But first I will contact the ACLU and bludgeon them on social media if the school is not responsive. I will run this fucker out on a rail.

Excellent.

David, that group sounds REALLY similar to the Freak-Ass Church that I was in. It is manipulative and damaging. Burn it down.