Friday Board Chapel

  Friday is the final day of the annual board meeting and, in some ways, is the most fun day. The meeting is done by 11 and the board then leads the chapel service. Each board member speaks and gets an opportunity to share a little about their own spiritual journey with Christ and their calling to PIU. The students get to express their thankfulness to the board with some beautiful music. I am always encouraged by this chapel and this year was no exception. After chapel the board shared lunch with the faculty and staff and we spent about two hours interacting. I took a lot of pictures so you can see what our board looks like in action. :)

Groups from the men and women’s dorms provided music

Siska Hutapea is now our only female member of the Board of Trustees and mentioned that she had brought beauty to the Board. She is also the chair of our finance committee and we are very thankful for her active participation as a local Guam board member. Bill Schuit is the Global Director for Liebenzell Mission USA. He provides valuable missionary experience to our board. He was a teaching colleague when we started teaching in Palau in 1984.

Hiob Ngirachemoi is a pastor from Palau and represents the Palauan Evangelical Church on our Board. He also spent three years on the Guam campus as our Dean of Men. He is also one of our graduates from the days of MIBS. John Robertson told some stories in chapel about his days growing up as an MK in India. He is a very active local Guam board member who provides very valuable construction knowledge and experience to our board.

David Mayer (left) thanked the students and staff for praying for him during his recent job search. He mentioned how grateful he was to have people all over the world praying for his job situation. He will be moving to Atlanta soon with a new job there as an architect. Vincent Parren represents the Yap Evangelical Church on the PIU Board. He is also the father of a current PIU student. I am not sure why I did not get a picture of Harald Gorges during his chapel speech. It was probably because I was laughing so hard I forgot to take a picture. Harald knows how to tell funny stories. He represents Liebenzell Germany on our board and has many years of missionary experience in Micronesia.

Mike introduced Howard Merrell our board chairman who also delivered the message for the chapel service. Howard spoke about how we as human beings are “treasures in ordinary containers.” He illustrated by having Ransome “guard” a treasure of chocolates in an ordinary basket made of leaves. Howard urged us to guard the treasure God has placed within us. It also fits PIU well. From outside we don’t look like much but God is working in a powerful way on this campus. PIU is “gold in a paper bag.”