May you have a blessed new year in 2007! We pray that you will know God in a deeper way as you go through the year. Happy New Year From Joyce and I, and Michael, Samantha and Titus. By the way, we will be on the US mainland from June 1 to August 9. If you would like us to speak at your church, Bible study or mission group, or just want to talk to us about what God is doing at PIBC and in Micronesia just send us an email and we will work hard to get to over to see you.
Just wanted to let you know that the PIBC web site http://pibc.edu is updated and new. If you have not taken a look at it lately you might want to click over there. Also, if you would like to keep up with what our Yap Mission Team is doing, one of our students, Mac Alfonso, is blogging about it with pictures. Here are a couple more pics of our vacation time with Michael, Samantha and Titus.
We are enjoying our Christmas vacation (PIBC shuts down all its operations from December 24 to January 2 to give the faculty, staff and workers a much needed rest.). Of course we have spent most of it just spending time with Michael, Samantha and Titus. But we have got out of the house a little. On Christmas afternoon Michael and I went over to the school to enjoy a couple hours of pick up basketball with Guam Palauan Evangelical 
Church group. It was good to burn off
a few of those Christmas dinner calories and have some good fellowship. We spent the afternoon at the beach the next day with the PIBC gang, BBQing and swimming. It does get colder on Guam in December. The temperature drops into the low 80's. Last night I had the opportunity to perform a wedding for some old family friends - the Mendiola's - that go back to our Yigo Baptist days. I am hearing a lot of feedback from people who want to see more of Titus so I am trying to include him in all the pictures. I am still working on putting video on this site.
"the Word became human and allowed God's glorious presence to live among us" (John 1:14).
We picked up our son Michael, his wife Samantha and our grandson Titus at the airport on Thursday. For me that was the beginning of Christmas vacation. They are missionary-teachers at Emmaus High School in Koror, Palau where Joyce and I started our missionary service in 1984. We have had fun getting reacquainted with Titus. He has grown so much since October. He is now looking at everything, figuring out that he can control his hands (and all the people around him) and making lots of noise.
Joyce's 2-3 year olds did a great job and were very cute as little melting snowmen with funny hats. The pre-school is a great opportunity for Joyce to minister the gospel to her kids and their parents. We are planning to go to the Bayview Baptist Christmas eve morning service and then see the Covenant Players Christmas Eve presentation in the evening. We will then have a late Christmas Eve dinner with our friends Tony and May Vigil and many other friends. Most of us are far apart from our families so we become each others' families.
Today was the last day of the semester before Christmas Break. My Old Testament class took their Final exam last night and our Cults class had its last discussion meeting this afternoon. Joyce closed her semester by presenting her linguistics class (pic below) project. I will be spending my Saturday tomorrow grading exams and papers to be ready to have my grades in by next Friday. My cults students still have until Wednesday to submit their assignments to me. It will be nice to have a couple quiet weeks and enjoy some time off. I know the students had a relieved look on their faces this evening.
when they return for graduation in May. I also had a chance to pray with the 10 students who will be leaving this week for a PIBC mission trip to Yap. Please pray for Hiob, Hollie and Ned as they lead the students in this ministry to youth and children on Yap.
As we head into the last week of the semester I thought it would be a good thing to look back and praise God for some of the exciting things that have happened at PIBC over the past few months. Please join us in thanking God for … The growing openness among the students to share their heart issues with us and trust us to help them.
The great unified team spirit among the faculty and staff.
The successful launching of our distance education program. Students from
God’s wonderful provision of a new dorm room and kitchen dining room (Quik space cargo container conversions), dorm furniture (from a sale at the Hilton), and other assorted physical needs being met at very low cost to us.
Provision for the financial needs of the students, especially the recent reception of the
1. For good rest for students, staff and faculty over the Christmas break.
2. For the student mission trip to 
3. For the acceptance of the revision of the “scope of work” list for our distance education grant from the USDA. This would provide all the equipment we need to make all of our sites into distance learning centers. This would be the first step in our plan to have a center in every island group for Bible and ministry training.
4. Many of our students struggle with family issues, addictive behaviors and other such problems. We will be starting counseling/accountability/encouragement groups on the
the person who thought of it.) We drove through Hotel Row to enjoy the new Christmas light displays. Though there was a lot of traditional Christmas display - reindeer, Santa Claus and elves, Nativity scenes, Christmas stars and winter snow scenes - the displays also worked in coconut trees, latte stones, Santa and elves in tropical wear - shorts and zorries- and starfish. Both of us commented on how much we enjoyed the Christmas season on Guam. There is a traditional, but different, island feel all at the same time. I said, yes, Guam has a very different ambiance and Christmas - in fact it is a "Guambiance."
Playing in the snow, inside the mall...