More Opportunity and Challenge in Chuuk

I am sorry that I have not posted in a couple days. I will try to get everyone caught up with a couple posts today. After you read the posts you might understand why I haven't had much time to post this week. Last week I spent most of my time at our Chuuk Teaching Facility on Weno, the district center of Chuuk State. Our campus there is in the middle of the downtown area in a complex with Berea Church, Berea Christian School (K-12) and Agape Christian Book Store. We have about 40 students there under our TF Coordinator Iotaka Choram (pictured here with me and TF office manager Cathy Samuel). We have 6 classrooms, an office, a fellowship and eating area and a library in our two story facility.
The TF is designed to meet the needs of Chuukese who are working (in the church, schools, government etc) or married and cannot get to one of our resident campuses. We have also been giving our Chuukese alumni an opportunity upgrade their diplomas and certificates, received in the Micronesian Institute of Biblical Studies Days, into a bachelor's or AA degree. Many of our students have been Christian School teachers upgrading before the November 2008 deadline. This week we had several meetings with the Chuuk Dept of Education to talk about expanding this service to the public school teachers as well. We will be working on an agreement next week which will allow these teachers to work on our AA in Bible and then add on our education minor as they work, ultimately toward a Bachelor's Degree. We will also be cooperating with the Ed. Dept. on continuing education to help upgrade teachers throughout Chuuk. Again, this is a great evangelism/discipleship opportunity and a real need we can serve in our local community.

One of the challenges we will face in doing this is the low English level of some of the these teachers and many of the other students who apply to PIBC in Chuuk. We require a 450 score on the TOEFL test to enter PIBC and we have many applicants who score in the 300-399 range. Over the last couple years we have been developing a Bridge Program of remedial classes that will close this gap and raise the English levels of these students. We hope to start this program within the next two months. We appreciate your prayers for God's direction in this.