Mormon Potluck is a group of friends who come together regularly to talk about news, culture, and technology, and share their views on the world. We created the Mormon Potluck Podcast to be one of the venues, but also have created this website. We invite everyone to participate: comment on blog items, send us links, or ask for us to talk about something in our podcast. Mainly, our goal is to have fun!

Send us your comments or suggestions… maybe we’ll mention you on the show! See you online!

About the Brethren (The Coveted Bios)


Elder Mitch


(Mitch’s Meanderings, http://mitch.contlafamily.com)

Having been born of goodly parents, Mitch was raised LDS and has been active in the church ever since (except for a 15-year period of self discovery). Author of the bestseller, “I Home Teach, Therefore I Am”, he is currently working on the follow-up title, “Home Teacher’s Guide to the Galaxy”. Mitch has served in the Young Men’s program, Primary, and a never ending succession of Elders Quorum Presidencies. In addition, Mitch is past president of the Association of Adults Living as Mormons in America (AALMA), an organization promoting the mainstreaming of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in America.

Seriously now, Mitch is a forty-something husband and father of two great boys, currently living near Portland, Oregon. Married to a wonderful woman who converted to the church, he enjoys spending time with his family and participating in outdoor activities. He currently serves in the Elders Quorum Presidency.

Mitch’s love affair with technology began as a teen, with a Commodore 64 and a 300-baud modem. Spending countless hours on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and in Usenet newsgroups, Mitch navigated his way through the blossoming online community. Along the way, a love for programming developed and has been an obsession ever since. Mitch is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and expert in all Windows operating systems, but these days prefers open source software and uses a Linux based system on his PC. He has a special fondness for Ubuntu, Python, Django, and his new iPhone.

Brother Troy


(http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=520307615)

Brother Troy is the oldest of five brothers and was raised LDS in Southern California. He is a thirty something husband and father and currently lives in the Portland, Oregon area. He met his eternal companion in accounting class at Ricks College and they finished out their college careers together on the beautiful north shore of the Hawaiian island of Oahu at BYU-Hawaii. They have a two-year old son who keeps them on their toes.

Brother Troy has served in number of different capacities in the Church including; the Young Men’s program, Sunday school, Primary, and a never ending succession of Elders Quorum Presidencies. He also served a full time mission for the Church in the mid 90’s in Brussels Belgium. Outside of Church Brother Troy loves spending time with family and friends in the outdoors and especially around the forests and shores of the Northwest. He loves the ocean and spending time building and caring for the ecosystem in his 70-gallon reef aquarium.

Like the other hosts of the show, Brother Troy has had a life-long fascination with technology. He got his start as a teen gaming on his Dad’s 16MHz Intel 80386-based IBM clone PC. After dabbling in Pascal and object oriented programming in his first formal programming classes in Junior College, he decided networking and systems administration were more up his alley than programming. He currently works as the IT manager for a small software company and is always looking for new challenges.

While he’s been a fan of podcasting since the Adam Curry/iPodder days, the Mormon Potluck Podcast is Brother Troy’s first venture into being a host.

Brother Sean


Brother Sean is a thirty-something (just barely!) who just recently moved to Atlanta, Georgia for a new job. This will be his first experience ward-shopping, and he is really excited about it.

Brother Sean grew up a true blue Oregonian. His parents are converts to the LDS Church and have raised four temple -married children and adopted two children. He is an avid sports fan, mostly following English Premier League action when it is available.

Brother Sean served a mission in Pennsylvania, and was proud of the fact he got to give free tours, almost exclusively to one LDS tour bus, of the “Restoration Site” where Joseph Smith was baptized in the Susquehanna River. Another (more serious) highlight of his mission was teaching an 86-year-old man the gospel, seeing him get baptized, and then seeing him a year later having completed a trip to the temple for his endowments.

After his mission Brother Sean found his beautiful wife, married, fathered two children, started, studied and finished school, bought a house, became employed in many jobs, and served in the church. Brother Sean has served in many callings, most notably those that employ his computer skills.

Brother Sean shares an interest in technology as the other brethren do, and knows that his sacrifice of being on the ward help desk be a testimony for others. He is OS agnostic (for the most part) having developed on Apple, PCs, and *nix systems. He is encouraged by the adoption of newer Linux flavors like Ubuntu, and the appearance of the iPhone. He does lots of web development and some general programming.

The podcast is Brother Sean’s first venture into the world of podcasting, as both a listener and a participant.

Brother Mitch


Born from jets, Brother Mitch was designed by 16 aircraft engineers! Well, not really, but it sounds cool!

Brother Mitch, aka Mitchell, was born in big sky country. (What did you expect? You need a lot of room for all those jets!) Unfortunately, his father was soon after stationed in West Germany, and thus Mitchell’s international man of mystery tour began! And sort of ended to. He returned to the states in time to start kindergarten, and really didn’t go international again until he was called to Brazil to serve a mission, but that’s a tale for a different day.

Today our hero finds himself pursuing dreams of acting and filmmaking. His passions include cycling, design, music, and Apple. He hates taking care of the yard and anything involving bare hands and grease(don’t ask). Speaking of grease and hands, his favorite food is the Beef Baja Chalupa from Taco Bell.

Ladies, if you are interested, this man is taken. He is married to the mob! Literally, his wife was born and raised in Roma and his mother-in-law is Sicilian. Together they have 3 girls, colors ranging from white to Olive, blonde to brunette. They are his number one passion!

Aside from writing poorly thought out biographies about himself in the third person, Mitchell takes care of the audio engineering for the Mormon Potluck Podcast. The magic happens at iRONMILL Studios voice recording room(not to be confused with the instrument recording/gym/scrapbooking room). Feel free to ask him questions about podcasting and audio, he can probably google the semi-right answer for you!