Rain

It's funny how you never appreciate having something until you lose it.

We have had heavy rains the past 10 days. But when we were in Arizona the prior 10 days, I was stunned at how dry the desert is. Tucson has had a total of 2.7 inches of rain this whole year, and 5 plus inches the year before. All life in the desert is dependent on rain, which we take for granted in NJ. We had more rain this past week than Tucson probably had for the past year and a half.

I will complain about rain less!

General Council in Phoenix

For those who don't know, I am in Phoenix since Monday. The Assemblies of God holds a general meeting every 2 years for inspiration and business. There are over 20,000 people here from all over the country and world. Youth are involved in the Fine Arts Festival. We have had services at night, and business metings and elections during the day. It has been a chance to see old friends (lots of missionaries and others here), and to catch up on what is going on in the larger body of Christ. Plus, there is a trade show area with many companies that sell products to Christians. Pastor Joe and I are having a contest to see who can get the coolest free thing and the most costly free thing (most of the venders are giving away promotional items ranging from candy to Ipads- the best stuff like Ipads are won via drawings, not given away)).

It is incredibly hot here, up to 111 degrees yesterday, with little greenery to absorb the heat (this is a hot spell even for them). They say that it is a dry heat, but so is the inside of my oven!

This is always a good spiritual experience.

Meijer sculpture garden

This great photo is from the big Meijer garden. This is a replica of a 24' foot horse, the model of which was made by DaVinci, but never cast as he planned (his original model was used by the French for target practice when they captured his city).

As you can see, this horse can get pretty aggressive and tries to stomp people. Only by luck and speed was I able to escape being stomped.

Gerald Ford museum

Last weekend we went to see Christina in Grand Rapids. It is a beautiful city, nothing like the Detroit and Michigan I imagined (it is 150 miles away from Detroit, and residents always say they live in "western Michigan").

The top attraction was the Gerald Ford Museum. He was from Grand Rapids. It was outstanding, a real time capsule of his few years as President. A few facts about Ford:
1. He is the only President who was never elected as President or Vice-President.
2. His original name was not Ford, as his mother was divorced when he was very young, and her husband adopted him, and gave him his name Ford.
3. The big issue of his day was whether to pardon Nixon and draft dodgers from Vietnam (he pardoned both).
4. The Bible verse of Proverbs 3:5-6 was a key comfort to him.
5. His ultimate goal in life was to become minority leader of the House, which he became. But to everyone's surprise, he went from there to Vice-President and President.

Finding the family cat

Yesterday we rescued our family cat. Before dinner she was outside on a leash, and got free. When I got home, Louise was frantically looking for her all over our property and nearby, but she was nowhere to be found. After searching for half an hour, a severe rainstorm began, and we went inside to eat dinner, planning to go back hunting when it slowed down.

After dinner we began the hunt again. Finally Louise found her under a huge thicket in woods on our property. But it is almost impossible to get in there, and then the storm restarted, this time with torrential rain and lightning nearby. We went in the house for cover.

After more time, we went out to the thicket. The cat was terrified and wet, and would not come.
We circled around it, and after many mosquito bites, were able to grab the cat.

I hope she appreciates this!

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.