As a preface, I would like to give a brief outline of this profile. We will begin by developing my life, as it is now� a pr�cis of the present, if you will. Next, we will set sail to explore the more memorable experiences of my past. Finally, we will finish our course with more theoretical approach to my life to offer a more textured picture of a young man named Mark Alan Oldham.

I have a small nuclear family: I am an only child. My parents are Virginia Newell Oldham and Gregory Alan Oldham. Let me introduce you to them.

Informally, my mom goes by Jinny. She is a full time employee at the State Attorney�s Office in Tampa. Her title is Investigative Assistant, and she is responsible for locating witnesses and/or victims in crimes and domestic violence cases. I admire her. Not only does she love her job, she loves her family even more. The term, �woman�s work,� was originally coined describing the work performed by women homemakers, those who did not have a full time job. However, given my dad�s hours, a good portion of the housework falls to her, and she carries it all out so faithfully and sacrificially. Besides her commitments to work and family, she is actively involved in her Sunday school class and the women�s ministry at First Baptist. She is a constant role model for me in terms of service, love, and selfless dedication.

My dad is a co-manager who works nights at Wal-Mart in Mulberry. On his days off, he has electrical side jobs and handy man�s works. Admittedly, his hours strain the intimacy of our family, but he does all the work he can to support the family financially. More to the point, we in the United States understand the importance of a well-lubed, fully functioning Wal-Mart.

Not only do I have a small nuclear family, I also have a small extended family. All four of my grandparents are still living, and beyond them, I have two aunts, one uncle, and three cousins. I seldom ever see any of my extended family except for my maternal grandparents. I would like to introduce you to them.

First, I would like you to meet my maternal grandfather, Robert E. Newell. He is a retired CPA, and I am proud to call him a personal mentor. It has been said that gray hair is a garland of wisdom, and of him this is true. I visit with him weekly, and when we get together, we usually engage in logomachies (disputes over or about words), discuss Christianity and recent Christian publications, go over vocabulary words of the week, quiz each other on current events, and discuss many other random topics.

Next, I would like you to meet my maternal grandmother. She is a full-time homemaker who reared their two daughters and, to an extent, her daughters� children. She enjoys her mysteries�Murder, She Wrote, Perry Mason, and Danielle Steele books�and M.A.S.H. She is the type of grandma who loves to spoil her grandkids (and because she has so few, she spoils the ones she has even more). She is always more than willing to cook a meal of hot dogs, hamburgers, spaghetti, meatloaf, or any other American dish for which she has the ingredients; she is always willing to help.

To round out my discussion of my family, I must mention someone who, although she is not a part of my family yet, will be in the not-so-distant future�my girlfriend, Mary. She has been nothing but a blessing since the time that we began dating on June 1, 2003. As many couples do, we met through a group of mutual friends. My senior year in high school I was actively involved in a group of close friends known as CFS (Christian Fellowship of Students) at Brandon High School, and after I graduated, I kept in touch with those at Brandon who were still a part of CFS. Although Mary wasn�t all that involved in CFS, she happened to go on a random beach trip with CFS, and that�s when we met.

Our first date was instigated by an awkward, �You know, I�m bored. I want to go somewhere,� over an instant messaging conversation through AIM. She responded, �Yeah, I am bored, too. I want to get out of the house.� �I feel like going to Wal-Mart. Do you want to go to Wal-Mart?� and she was hooked Maybe it was I who was hooked, or maybe we were mutually hooked. Any way, we went to the Wal-Mart in Valrico about an hour later�well I was there an hour later, she was late�and that marked our first date. Our relationship has only grown since then.

Now that I have discussed, in part, my family, I present a more personalized discussion of myself.

I would like to revisit my identity as a Christian. Jesus was the greatest genius that has ever lived, and no wonder because He was God incarnate (John 1:1), the very Son of the living God. Many view Christianity as merely a religion, but it is so much more. It is the very context and meaning of my life, the only source of life itself. All of life centers on faith in Christ Jesus.

In terms of personal interests, they are multitudinous. First, as strange as it may sound, I really do enjoy reading the dictionary for recreation. In all honesty, I am reluctant to pick up the dictionary to look up a word for fear that so many other tantalizing words that I do not know will beseech me to their entertainment. The dictionary is a world unto itself with more knowledge than most any other book. Within its binding are ideas from virtually all areas of study from aeronautics to zoology. Over the past few years, words have enraptured me. They are the very conduits of communication without which our world would not function. One will find a mighty undertaking to live without words. Within the phrase, �I think; therefore, I am,� there is an implicit assumption that words are the very flesh of thought. Take away his words, and what has he to think about other than images? How does he know that he is thinking unless he has a word to call it so? But give a man words, and then send him on his way�immediately the world is alive to him.

Beyond the dictionary but still in regards to words, I have taken a liking to The Synonym Finder�an admirable thesaurus. Who needs the word, �yellow.� when he can say, �gambogian�? Or call it a �thing,� when you can call it a �dojigger,� �flumadiddle,� or �thingumadoodle�? Suffice it to say that it is roundly refreshing to replace platitudes with novelty.

I would like to expand the dimensions of my interest for words to encompass my broader interest for language. Diction is but a moiety of language. For my honors thesis, I write on �The Absurdities of the English Language: 95 Theses on the English Language, Proper Usage, and Its Grammar,� or so I have entitled it.

Next, I play guitar. In high school, when my primary �group of friends� would get together, many of them would have their guitars with them. Invariably, it seemed to me, they would all get out their guitars and start playing whatever songs they knew. So, during my senior year in high school, I ventured out, purchased a cheap Fender acoustic guitar from a pawnshop, and, over time, taught myself chords and rhythm. You would not believe how difficult it is for a white man to learn rhythm. About a year ago, I purchased a nicer Martin acoustic/electric guitar, and, since then, have played in front of numerous groups and led many church-related groups in worship, most notably the Cross.

Another avocation of mine includes photography. I cannot trace this hobby to its precise origins, but I can speculate some of the reasons why I have ardently assumed this as a hobby over the past couple of years. I am visually oriented. That is, when I learn, I learn from images, figures, tables, pictures, etc. I have had, for as long as I can recall, an interest in mathematics and geometry�curves, angles, lines, and texture. Furthermore, I consider myself well oriented to my physical surroundings. Finally, as of late, I have cultured an admiration toward aesthetics, color, and art. The last step in the process, logically, remains to transition from merely observing the sights�these glories of vision�to capturing them. Ah, but there are myriad portraits, landscapes, sunsets, etc. to capture, and film photography can be time consuming and expensive with the endless rolls of film and developing costs. Moreover, it does not allow the freedom to modify the pictures without a sizeable investment of time and money. I attribute to digital photography the final thrust that introduced me to the field of photography. With digital photographs, I can modify them on the computer and the discs that store the pictures are reusable. What beauteous sights we do behold when, at once, we stop to admire the world, caparisoned with light.

I am a collector at heart. If I see �first in a series� printed on something, my mind races and wonders, �How many more are there?� If I purchase something that is labeled two of four, I immediately want numbers one, three, and four as well. There is something to be said about completion. I consider that I have some collections of merit. My longest standing collection is of Hotwheels. From the age of six, I can recall purchasing all the new Hotwheels models and paintjobs. I figure that it was my outlet for owning exotic cars for a fraction�of the order of 5 x 10-5 to one in some instances�of the price of the six or seven-digit price tags the �real cars� boasted. Hotwheels used to cost fifty cents a car. I suppose I also enjoyed their uniformity; all cars cost the same price. Besides, I could �drive� them as fast and recklessly as I wanted without any danger of actually being in peril. Even now, they are still under a dollar, but I no longer remove them from their packaging as I once did. As I have found, that depreciates their value considerably; I liken it to driving a car off the lot. It is the same principle. Currently, I have around 1,500 Hotwheels in their original packages (called blister packs) and another 300 or so removed from their blister packs. I only wish that I would have had the foresight to purchase two of each: one to play with, the other to keep in a collection. Alas, it is but an irretrievable wish.

I also collect three-dimensional puzzles. As of now, I have thirty-five three-dimensional puzzles; twenty-five of them are over 500 pieces. Certain highlights include the Space Shuttle Atlantis, Millennium Falcon, St. Mark�s Basilica, St. Peter�s Basilica, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and Taj Mahal,. However, two stand out among the rest: Big Ben (1483 pieces) and New York, New York (3141 pieces). Big Ben towers at 4�2�. The length and width of New York, New York are 2� by 3�, and it stands about 2� in the air. For clarification, New York, New York is downtown Manhattan including all the buildings and streets. In terms of duration of assembly, the hardest puzzle that I have encountered required four days, but the majority of my puzzles were completed within two days.

Here are a few final miscellaneous facts about me. I type in the range of 70 to 90 wpm depending on the time of day and my alertness. If I had to choose between dogs and cats, I would choose dogs without the hesitation of cognition. I have taken an interest in classical music lately; three of my favorite pieces are Canon by Machiavelli, F�r Elise by Beethoven, and Tritch Tratch Polka by Strauss. I consider myself a gourmand of mints. Although there is not enough substance in a mint on which to gorge myself, I am quite fond of them�and all types too. Regular mints, chewy mints (such as Mentos), mint gums, and even those outrageously wild strips that disintegrate when you put them on your tongue.

This concludes the brunt of my discussion on the present state of my life, and I find that we are but in a harbor. Let us now be off to navigate my past. On our voyage, we shall journey past a few major landmarks scattered in the ocean of my history. Along the way, we will descry such sights as my former education, my work experiences, past vacations, and other memories in my past.

First on our voyage, we will catch sight of my education. I have attended three schools throughout my life. From K4 to 8th grade, I attended a private school, Central Baptist Christian School, with the exception of four months. Due to my dad�s being transferred, our family moved to Ocala for some months during which time I attended Shores Christian Academy. However, we returned to the same house in which we had lived before we left for Ocala because it had not yet sold. For high school, I attended Brandon High, at which some of the greatest teachers in the county work. I admit that I have little to no reference to make this claim, but the teachers of most of the honors classes at Brandon High School have been teaching for decades�longer than many of the schools in the area have been open. With their rich histories of teaching and ardent concerns to help students learn, the honors and advanced placement teachers that I had at Brandon High School were nonpareil.

My work history includes only two jobs. I worked at Taco Bell for a few months to pay the deductible for a minor accident that occurred in the Brandon High School parking lot. After earning the money that I needed to pay off what I owed my parents, I decided that I had no further need for a job. Through the incident I did learn two things: First, when you open your door in a parking lot, don�t open it all the way even when the parking spot to your left is open; else people can drive into that open parking place and half take your door off. Second, working at a fast food restaurant is not for me.

My other job was working nights (the graveyard shift) at a nursing home called the Health Center of Plant City where I worked as a certified nursing assistant (CNA). I worked there for four months, of which most of the time I spent on D-wing, the Alzheimers unit. Now, residents with Alzheimers are exit seeking, which means that they are constantly wandering and seeking for exits. Therefore, there is a code to get in and out of D-wing. Although the official name of D-wing is the Sunshine Village, it's more affectionately known as lockdown or D-block (as an allusion to prison) by those who work there. Why did I work at a nursing home? I wanted a job as quickly as possible that paid the highest wages, that required the least amount of training, and that was in the medical field. The position that fulfilled these requirements best was being a CNA.

I have gone on two particularly memorable vacations in my past. The first of these two was a cross-country trip, by van, with my parents and maternal grandparents. We traversed the entire breadth of the United States from Florida to California and stretched as far north as Montana. On the trip, we saw the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, Yellowstone National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, and many other natural landmarks across our country. In addition to the national beauty that we witnessed, we also visited numerous manmade attractions and structures including Six Flags Astroworld, Disneyland in California (as opposed to Disney World here in Orlando), Hoover Dam, many of the casinos in Las Vegas, and others. In all, on that trip we covered nineteen states.

The second of the two memorable trips was also an extended road trip up to Canada, but this time it was without my dad due to work engagements. The primary thrust of this trip was a sampling of theme parks on the eastern coast of the United States. We visited Carowinds, Busch Gardens (Williamsburg, PA), Hershey Park, Opryland, USA, Kings Island, and, best of all,�at least for roller coaster enthusiasts� Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. Although a majority of the time was invested in theme parks, we also took some time to visit locations of more �refined tastes� including Colonial Williamsburg, Washington DC, New York City (including Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, etc.), and Niagra Falls. On this trip, we covered fourteen states. Given a few states overlapping in the two trips, I have stepped foot in thirty-one of the fifty states. I am very grateful for the experiences that I had on both of these trips.

Other trips on which I have been include mission trips. Dilapidation, hurt, and need confront those who enter an inner city. I have been on five mission trips to various inner cities in the United States and one to Mexico. I believe that the location that we visited in Mexico was translated the �land of the lost,� and it is a frighteningly apt epithet. The inhabitants lived in houses that seemed as though a hard storm would level every one of them. Most of the roofs were composed of scrap metal that had been lying around. But what astounded me most about the entire experience was the joy that so many of these people had: they almost glowed when they invited me inside their make-shift abodes. Maybe it was because they knew of people who did not even have a roof over their heads; maybe they were genuinely thankful for life; maybe for some other reason. Whatever the cause, though, these people were unspoiled by money, unspoiled by pretense. It was a penetrating look into the hearts of men and women. I don�t believe that I can ever be the same again. And it�s better that way.

In the past, I have taught a number of youth Bible studies and discipleship groups at First Baptist as well as filled in as substitute teacher when needed for a couple of Sunday school classes. Also, I taught a Sunday school class of college students for over a year (my past lessons are available under �Church-related�).

Here we have turned to the final leg of our voyage, and our objective is to answer the question, �Who is Mark Oldham?� It is the question that seems to echo from deep to deep. Allow me to define myself in a number of dimensions and illustrate their implications.

I would classify myself as a perfectionist; furthermore, nearly every one of my close friends would do the same. According to a story that my parents and grandparents love to tell, for my first birthday my parents give me a piece of cake. What do children do with cake? Well, ordinary children make it a point to get it everywhere but their mouth. It seems some intrinsic quality of people that they enjoy entropy. Not I. I was programmed differently. As the story goes, I ate the cake ever so gingerly taking care to ensure that each morsel reached my mouth and not my face. Needless to say, they wanted to make this all the more memorable so they smeared the cake all over my face because I would not.

Who is Mark Oldham? He is a realist. Optimists often consider realists pessimists; pessimists often consider realists optimists. My realism is borne out, in part, by my fascination with perfectionism. Optimism can offer unfounded hopes whereas pessimism can afford needless despair. I would rather approach a situation with an open mind to apperceive it as it is. Here is where another element of Mark Oldham enters stage right: pragmatism. I view things realistically because that is how they exist; they exist in reality. But there is no need in suffering through something when there is a pragmatic approach to solving, ameliorating, or allaying it. Admittedly, it is a very scientific approach.

Who is Mark Oldham? He is a thinker or, quite simply, one who delights to think, one who relishes the thought of thinking.

But finally, and most intimately, who is Mark Oldham? I am in Christ (Gal. 3:26, 27). I am a child of God (Rom. 8:16). I am loved by God (Rom. 5:8). I am forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:7). I am saved by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8). I am justified before God (Rom. 5:1). I am new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). I am more than a conqueror (Rom. 8:37). I am the light of the world (Matt. 5:14).