Eastern Micronesia Trip–Chuuk and Pohnpei

I returned last night from a 9 day trip through Eastern Micronesia. The purpose of the trip was securing places for our distance education centers in these islands, recruiting students and meeting with church leaders in the islands. I was supposed to leave on Monday for several meetings with Chuukese church leaders but my flight was postponed from Monday to Tuesday by tropical storm Bavi, which wreaked havoc on my Monday meetings. My friends in Chuuk had no idea that I would be coming Tuesday so I had to hustle to make the connections after arriving there. Nevertheless, I had productive meetings at Berea Christian School, Chuuk High School, Chuuk Department of Education and with PIU Board member Komber Kumo. I plan to return to Chuuk soon to follow up. We still hope to offer some classes at the renewed Chuuk TF this summer. We will really need to move quickly to get the students accepted and classes scheduled. (Pictures are of the Pohnpei skyline)

I flew to Pohnpei,as scheduled on Wednesday. On Wednesday night I met with the administration of Ohwa Christian School and Ohwa Theological College (pictured right) to discuss an agreement with them to house our distance education center. It was a very productive meeting and we came up with, I think, a good agreement to present to our boards. The people at Ohwa are very eager to have PIU classes taught there. In fact all 31 Ohwa students turned in their PIU applications to me the next day when we met for an informational meeting. I also got to meet most of the 10 high school seniors who also submitted PIU applications for next fall. We are also hoping to offer summer classes by distance education in Pohnpei this year.

I also had the first time experience of offering the PIU entry test at a public high school to 96 students on Thursday. They also seemed enthusiastic and asked me several questions about PIU. Even though most of the morning it was raining so hard on the tin roof we could not hear the audio portion of the test we managed to find a few rainless minutes to get the test in for all the students. It was exciting for me to give the test to such a large group and great to meet so many new potential students.

I said goodbye to our new partners in Pohnpei on Friday afternoon and boarded the plane to head to Majuro the next stop on the trip….