Pastor Skar

     There is an old joke about New Jersey/ New York that goes like this:  Q: Why does New York have all the lawyers and New Jersey all the waste dumps?  A:  New Jersey got first choice.  My apologies to my daughter the lawyer.      New Jersey is called the Garden State, but I do not know why.  I did not see many gardens there.  There were lots of trees and swamps in Southern NJ.  Next to the Bible Camp where we stayed there was a sod farm.  There seemed to be a few of those around.      New Jersey is blessed with great beaches.  As we learned they are very popular with the folks in the Philadelphia area.  On the saturday we drove across NJ from Philly to Cape May the traffic was horrendous.  The eastbound lanes were congested with beach goers.  The beaches were crowded on the weekend.  The kids sure enjoyed the surf and asked to go back many times.      In North Dakota the roads run north south east and west, in a grid.  We can thank the Northwest Ordinances for this.  In 1787 Cong

A lot of funny things can occur when 18 people spend 16 days together in close proximity.  Here are some of the best laughs I had.      At the work site there was this pile of bricks in the muddle of the yard.  It was a rather unsightly pile, so, a few of the ladies decided to move it over behind the yard sheds out of sight.  Armed with a wheelbarrow they began carting bricks.  I watched them from my spot at the saw.  Not too far into the pile they ran into some interesting critters unlike anything we would find in North Dakota.  There was quite an assortment of snails, slugs, spiders, and some others that were unidentifiable without a critter book.  Understandably, the ladies had some angst about thrusting their hands into the pile to get out a brick with so much wildlife calling the pile their home.      I ventured over to investigate.  The critter of the moment was a huge spider, bigger than any barn spider I had ever seen.  I took a stick and smashed it.  Immediately, hundreds o