My garden

Most people don't know that I am a hard-core gardener. My dad taught me this when I was young. I have always loved nature and outdoors, along with animals and of course minerals and fossils. In high school I even took care of the family garden, weeding and all. If I had a thousand lives, one of them would be spent as a gentleman gardener (to do it all the time would be hot and hard work, others would do the weeding!)

Tuesday was a great day, I spent half of it planting my garden. It was cool and overcast, perfect planting weather. I put in green beans, pole beans, okra, lettuce, 2 kinds of tomatillo, 4 types of pumpkins (regular, dill giant, white and jack-be-little), gourds, squash (zucchini, yellow, butternut, others), cucumbers, shallots, kohlrabi, and many tomatoes (better boy, brandywine-an Amish heirloom-the best tasting tomato, roma, polish linguisa, sweet million and a few others), which I grew from seed.

The coolest thing, which has never happened to me before, is that a box turtle was in our garden a week ago, and buried a nest of her eggs there, right in the middle! So we may have baby turtles along with our tomatoes from our garden.

If you are by our house, stop by and I will show you the garden.

Building dedication

We had a glorious celebration last Saturday. We have been in the building about 5 months now, and have it in pretty good shape. It was nearly a full house, with lots of music, speeches, prayer, food and rejoicing! The mayor of Marlboro (Jon Hornik) and the superintendent of the NJ Assemblies of God Carl Colletti addressed us. It was a memorable day.

The Board of Chosen Freeholders celebrated "this auspicious occasion and proclaims this day, Saturday, June 18, 2011 as 'Monmouth Worship Center Day'." This is kind of cool. You can see the declaration on the plaque on the welcome center.

Church location facts

Here are some interesting facts about our new location-
1. The original marl pits after which Marlboro was named are in the back of the church property. People say all sorts of fossils, including dinosaur bones, have been found there.
2. We are across from a very new development, and right down the street from the original Marlboro Village, built around the Civil War.
3. The bike path intersecting Vanderburg will be 26 miles when finished, and go from Freehold Borough all the way to Sandy Hook when completed. It is beautiful.
4. Witherspoon Street across the way is named after a famous American (not Reese!) John Witherspoon was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and President of the College of New Jersey (today Princeton). He was a major influence in the colonies, and a great Christian.

Question- who was Vanderburg?

What a way to wake up

Wednesday I awoke to the loud sound of a car crash right in front of my house. There was a loud thud of metal hitting metal. We live on a main road, and people often go faster than they should. When I looked out the window, an SUV had hit a mini-van. I hope everyone was OK. The minivan's rear was pretty crunched up, and the vehicle had to be towed away on a flatbed. The other car drove away. Broken glass and car parts were all over the street.

Kind of a jarring way to wake up.

Will Graham celebration

Last night was the training for supervisors in the celebration this weekend. This is shaping up to be a big event, with the Ocean Grove auditorium expected to be full every night. I pray that we as a church step up to this and bring and invite many people. Our goal is 20 new people to be added to the church through this.

Stay tuned for more details.

A Fox day

Yesterday I finally met Herod the fox. Several people around church have seen him, but only yesterday did he appear to me. He was trotting at a good pace around the water detention pond, where many upset geese and goslings were watching him. He looked like a small red-brown dog, but pretty thin. I have named him Herod, as Jesus called him a fox. He has a bird in his mouth.

The irony is that I was photographed on fox (news) the same night (was Herod prophetic?). They were doing a story on the ACLU threatening Neptune on the use of the Ocean Grove auditorium for graduation. I was there for the Will Graham celebration supervisor training, and ended up clearly seen in the news the next morning (sorry, no words of mine). I guess this was my 2 seconds of fame!

Let me know if you meet our church pet.

A movie not to be missed

We went to see "Soul surfer" the other day. This is a great movie, the true story of Bethany Hamilton, a 13 year old Christian surfer girl in Hawaii who had her arm bitten off by a shark. It is currently at most movie theaters.

Why is this so good?
1. Great message, of how a person coped with personal tragedy.
2. PG
3. Great surfing footage
4. Beautiful pictures of Hawaii, a number of which I recognized.
5. The youth pastor is a hero.
6. Her breakthrough happened on a missions trip, great depiction of what God can do on them.
7. Good movie for a teen.

This really is too good to miss.