Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Trip to Mainland: Texas

After our time in the Southeastern US, Steve and I headed to Texas for some recruiting at Dallas Seminary and for some other meetings with old friends and (hopefully) new partners. We did two lunch meetings with students and had 3-4 students at each of the meetings. Several of the students expressed interest in exploring service with PIU in the future and two couples are now making plans to come out for a short term teaching assignment in the summer of 2010. We also got to spend some time with John and Lisa Tomada (John is a PIU alumnus and Lisa was our Dean of Women) and they are one of the couples planning to join us this summer. Steve stayed with them and we used their home as a meeting place.


On Saturday we headed out to Salada Texas to meet with a Palauan church group. On the way we met Hollie and Aaron Schaub and their new son, Sam. Hollie and Aaron were stationed on Guam up until early last year and Hollie served in our Student Life department mentoring our students. We had a great time eating pizza with them and getting caught up on what they are doing. We then drove a couple more hours out to Salada to meet with the Palauan group. Steve and I enjoyed fellowship with them and the opportunity to share with them the opportunities at PIU. Several were interested in distance education classes and a few in sending their young people out to Guam to attend here.


We also were able to meet with Roger Doriot who has been working for years in Papua doing Bible translation. We explored the possibility of partnering to speed the process of Bible translation and church planting on that island. Roger's goal is to get all these tribal languages translated by 2025 and he wants to use local people to do these translations. He will be visiting PIU early in 2010 to see if PIU is a good place to give these translators biblical and theological education. We are also excited about the possibility of partnering our PIU students with Papuans as missionaries to do translation and church planting there. Please pray for us as we seek God's leading and provision for this ministry. In the picture Steve and Roger (and me, I took the picture) are having a Skype planning meeting with Katherine Currie, our PIU grant writer - we do more and more meetings by Skype!)

I also enjoy coming to Texas because I get to stay with my daughter, Missy. I had a great time watching some football with Missy and Cliff on Sunday afternoon and Monday night. The good father-daughter time is a nice extra benefit of the trip. We also got to have dinner with Joyce's sister Janet and her husband Paul. (Sorry about the dark picture). We went to church with them on Sunday morning and I got a chance to show the PIU DVD to the Redeemer Bible Church mission committee and share with them a little about the ministry at PIU.

One more post on the trip to come!

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