PIU Staff Appreciation Banquet

    Another end-of-year tradition at PIU is a celebration banquet to honor our faculty and staff for a their hard work during the year and to say goodbye to those who will be leaving us after this semester. This year’s banquet was held at the Table 35 Restaurant in Tamuning. We are thankful for an anonymous donation that made this year’s banquet possible. The food was excellent and the fellowship was even better. One of the great privileges in being at PIU is that we get to minister together with a very unique and wonderful group of God’s people.

We are very thankful for the volunteer service of Larry and Sharon Bock (right) and Hugh Jamison (left). Hugh served this semester with our maintenance team and coordinated the financing and installation of our new dorm furniture. Larry and Sharon have served for the last 4 years as Bible faculty (Larry) and Admissions Coordinator for International Students (Sharon). We are really going to miss them!

Joyce and I enjoyed an evening together.

 

There were a few speeches and lots of pictures taken.

A few of us posed for one more picture before we left. Left to Right: Tony Vigil, May Vigil, Samantha Owen, Mike Owen, Joyce Owen, Dave Owen, Celia Atoigue, Phil Atoigue, Anne Stinnette, Steve Stinnette

PIU Reading Booth at Guam Youthfest

  Last Saturday was the annual Guam Youthest at Skinner Plaza and, for the 2nd year in a row, PIU had a booth there. This year’s PIU booth was the Story Telling Tent sponsored by the PIU library and organized by PIU librarian Lisa Collins. We promised a story every 15 minutes and I think we did better than that. The tent featured several PIU staff and faculty, and prominent people from the community. We met a lot of people and had many opportunities to talk to them about what PIU can offer to the Guam communities.

Joyce and I took turns reading for about an hour.

We took our turn reading right before the Lieutenant Governor of Guam and his wife. She read “The Lorax” to the kids. We were also joined from time to time by some of the characters from the books.

Pictures of Courage’s 4th Birthday Party at CEC

Friday afternoon we headed over to Chuck E. Cheese (I think it has been on Guam now for about a year or so) at the Guam Premium Outlets to celebrate her 4th birthday. We took a few pictures of the event! Here is a sample.

The birthday princess takes her throne and rides her horse

The merry-go-round was also popular with Courage and Serenity. They must have ridden this 15-20 times

The boys play air hockey as Mike gives driving instruction to his daughters

Serenity and Miri “enjoy” some rides

The girls know how to enjoy a wild ride

Pizza time! Cheese only pizzas all around.

The birthday princess is crowned

and collects her prize tickets

She takes care of the candles on her birthday cake

Senior Chapel

Traditionally the last chapel of the semester is the “Senior Chapel” in which all the about-to-be-graduates have an opportunity to address their fellow students and the staff and share a little about their experience at PIU. It is always one of my favorite chapels of the year as I don’t often get to hear directly from so many students what has made their time at PIU meaningful to them. This year was especially touching as we had several students who had been through some trying times and had very encouraging testimonies about how God had used PIU in their lives. We will be very excited to see our biggest graduating class ever march on May 7th. After leading some congregational singing and sharing a “senior song” several of the graduates gave their testimonies…

Charles Sam (left) served as the MC and music leader for the graduates. He talked about how God fulfilled His promise of “giving him the desires of your heart” at PIU. Mondale Tim (right) talked about how PIU has prepared him well for the job and ministries he will be doing when he returns to Chuuk.

Ikol Suda (left) said that he had a very speech ready but yesterday’s final exam in Critical Thinking and Logic had driven everything else out of his brain so he could just say “thanks.” Rommel Carino talked about how PIU was the right place for him to go to school because the school ministered to him in a holistic way.

Pam Flores (Left) within a few humorous stories about classes she took at PIU (snoring and meowing cats in class?) talked about how thankful she was for the family atmosphere on the campus and how allowance was made for her to bring her children on to the campus while she was in class. She also talked about how every class she took gave her something important to take into her life and ministry. Pam and her husband Karl will be graduating together (Pam-BA and Karl-MAR) this year. Esther Tarkong was thankful for PIU providing her with access to a Christian college education and working with her as a single mother of two children so that she could graduate.

 

Mo, who will graduate with an MAR degree, talked about the amazing ways God brought him to PIU and was especially thankful for the way that staff, faculty and administration went out of their way and beyond expectations to help him with academic and personal issues in his time at PIU. Ceci, Teisy and Jaynee came up together to give their thanks to fellow students, staff and faculty.

 

 

Pastor Sal Ilai led us in prayer and shared. Sal began by mentioning that he holds the PIU record for the longest time to get a BA degree – 17 years. He said that, in 1995 as a pastor in the Pohnpei Church of Christ, he realized he needed to move beyond “an elementary knowledge of the Bible” and get deeper training and enrolled in PIU. He encouraged the students with several stories of how God, not only provided the financial resources for him to go to school, but went beyond to meet their other needs while he was studying at PIU. He shared how God sustained him spiritually through the deaths of his mother and then his wife within days of each other in 2010. He closed by saying that the fact that “I can stand up here and preach in English” is because of PIU.

The chapel went several minutes beyond the normal time, but no one noticed. We were all blessed.