The Butlers

Hello Garden City Church!

We are Mark and Michaela and, along with our two chaotic cats Luna and Nova, we make up the Butler clan here in San Jose. We are both originally from Fairfield (known solely for being the home to a National Treasure: the Jelly Belly Factory) but we didn't actually meet until college at Cal Poly, SLO. After college, Mark was living and working in San Jose. And, after we got married in 2019, Michaela moved from Napa to call San Jose and Garden City Church home.

Mark is a senior manufacturing engineer at Stryker Endoscopy. He spends his leisure time hiking, brewing the best coffee, rooting for Manchester City during their matches, attempting to explain his job and other engineering concepts to Michaela (again), crushing it on Rocket League, and creatively solving problems around the house. With a degree in wine and viticulture, Michaela has taken to the business side of the wine industry in recent years. She currently works at Share a Splash wine company based in Menlo Park as part of the marketing team. She spends her off-hours meddling in her balcony garden, quoting The Office incessantly, cooking, playing soccer, baking sourdough (which, I would like to establish, was a hobby pre-COVID), staying active, and watching Formula 1 (thanks Netflix).

A lot of our favorite places in the area either revolve around food or the outdoors. We find ourselves hiking in the Saratoga hills frequently and, when restaurants were more open, we would often cozy up for brunch after the Campbell's Farmer's Market at Orchard City Kitchen for this food miracle called a "Triple B". Look it up.

During COVID, a huge highlight for us has been a deepening connection and relationship with our small group. Throughout the pandemic, these people have been a constant source of comfort, safety, community, and spiritual encouragement. A great memory with them, from this season, was during one of our virtual party nights. We had a Jeopardy game going on and that was the night I realized that we had people in the group that loved The Office and Parks & Recreation just as much as me - if not more.

If anything we have said above connects with you - reach out to us or come find us after church some time. And if it didn't...then reach out to us or come find us after church some time! We love to meet new people and get to know our church family even better. And if you're looking for an ice breaker, coffee and/or wine is a good place to start.