Arrival in Palau

We flew into Palau just about at sunset. It was absolutely beautiful. The water was so clear and calm that we could see the reef clearly under the water. The sunset had turned the sky above the horizon pink and purple. Rob Watt our Palau TF coordinator picked us up at the airport and we enjoyed noticing again how green and colorful Palau is. After we dropped off our stuff we went to Michael and Samantha’s apartment at the high school and saw them and shared the Domino’s Pizza we had brought from Guam for them and Rob. Of course, we spent the rest of the evening admiring Titus.

Super Bowl Monday

This year my birthday fell on Super Bowl Monday. The Boydstons, Steve and Jason Stinnette, Melissa Heck and Hiob Ngirachmoi came over to watch the game and eat birthday cake with me. (Joyce had to work - we will celebrate tonight with an evening out for dinner.) The game was exciting with 4 turnovers , 3 touchdowns and 2 power outages in the 1st quarter. We missed the first 5 1/2 minutes of the game waiting for the power to come on and were thankful when everything came back on so we could watch the rest of the game. We were pretty evenly divided between Colts and Bears fans. Melissa and I ate most of the triple chocolate birthday cake that Joyce made for me and Steve ate most of the hot wings. It was nice to take some time off to relax and have a little fun. So much of the island finds some kind of excuse not to work and watch the game, that Super Bowl Monday has become pretty much an unofficial island holiday. Joyce and I will be getting ready for our trip to Palau on Friday. I will go to Palau and Yap the next two weeks to teach my Wisdom Lit class there. She is going to Palau for the weekend to see Titus. I am sure we will have pictures to post of that trip soon.

PIBC Summer Mission Trip Opportunities

The Yap mission team shared about their experience on their Christmas vacation mission trip during chapel last week. Stella shared how God provided for her financially to go on the trip. Mac shared how his little brother and several cousins came to know the Lord while the team was doing ministry there. (This paragraph and picture was borrowed from our Dean of Women, Melissa Heck’s blog http://missionarygirl-guam.blogspot.com/)

Mission trips are a valuable learning experience and ministry opportunity which we at PIBC would like to share with our prayer partners, financial supporters and other friends. This summer we will be leading two mission trips to the Marshall Islands and to Thailand. We invite young adults (preferably in the 18-25 year old range) from our partner churches, schools and mission groups to be part of our summer mission teams.

The Marshall Islands Mission Team will be working with Rev. Enja Enos, pastor of the Rita Congregational Church in Majuro and a former Tol PIBC Campus Director, and Josen Teico, 2006 PIBC graduate. The focus will be participation in children’s and youth ministry as well as general church work. This team will leave from Chuuk after the Tol PIBC graduation on

May 19, 2007, and will return approximately two weeks later during the first week of June.

The cost for the trip is approximately $1,500. This includes airfare, housing, and food

The Thailand mission trips consists of three teams. Team number one is an evangelistic team in an area of Northeast Thailand called Chiang Rai, where we would be joining a team of four Thai Campus Crusade for Christ staff, at an English-speaking international university sharing the gospel with students from all over Southeast Asia and China in particular.

The second team is a music team in the capital city of Bangkok, where we would be joining other Thai Campus Crusade for Christ staff to try and open a new ministry on a university campus that has been difficult to reach. Music ministry would be used to create opportunities and make bridges to share the gospel.

The third team is a Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) team somewhere in Thailand. This team would use TESL in a setting designed to create opportunities and make bridges to share the gospel. We need to know how many PIBC students are interested in joining this team before moving ahead with making detailed arrangements. This team is open only to those students who have recommendation from TESL faculty.

All three teams would meet in Guam for training on July 19, leaving for Thailand together with their team leaders the following week, and be in Thailand for about three weeks, returning to Guam around August 15. The work is very demanding, and the teams are limited only to those who are seriously committed and want to work hard during the trip. Below please mark which of the trips for which you wish to be considered.

The cost for the trip is approximately $1,500. This includes airfare, housing, and food.

If you would like more information send me an email at dowen@pibc.edu

Chuuk Library Dedication

I am just back this morning (2:20-4:00 AM red-eye flight) from Chuuk. This weekend was the dedication of the new library building on our Chuuk campus. It was a great celebration, with lots of food of course, many speeches and songs and a time of praise for all the resources God provided to make the building possible. We are thankful for all the local and international volunteer labor that went into the building. It took a little over three years to finish it. We often struggled with lack of available materials and, at times, specially skilled labor. But, now, to have a library with easily accessible books, study areas, a group study room, offices and computer lab is a great blessing to the students and staff. It was great to see the students already making use of it. We still need prayer for a solution to our need for internet access (Tol island is very remote with no basic infrastructure, water power etc) and other modern communication tools. I also had a good chance this weekend to spend time with our Chuuk faculty, staff and students and a chance to preach in the campus Sunday church service. God is doing some great things with our 60+ students on the Chuuk campus and the 35 students at the Chuuk Teaching facility in the district center. I will be home for a couple weeks to finish my intensive Wisdom Literature class on Guam and then I will be off to Yap and Palau in February to teach the same class there.

Semester Has Started!

The semester has officially started for me. Actually, the Chuuk campus started last week and the faculty and staff on Guam officially began last week with administration, faculty and staff meetings to prepare for the new semester. I will be teaching one course, mostly by distance education, Wisdom Literature. I will be teaching six 2 1/2 hour sessions on the Guam campus over the next two weeks and then re-teach the sessions in Palau (Feb. 9th-16th) and Yap (Feb. 17th-23rd). We have 25 students signed up so far - 12 from Guam, 8 from Yap and 5 from Palau. The students will interact in our online class chat room. Please pray that the Yap government will allow our students to use the local high school computer lab. These trips will also give me a good chance to interact with local church leaders, PIBC staff and alumni. Of course, it will be great to see Michael, Samantha and Titus again in Palau.
I will be heading to Chuuk this weekend for the dedication of the new Chuuk campus library. Because of the difficulty in getting materials it has taken more than two years to build it. The new library is an important step forward for the campus and takes care of a very important deficiency in maintaining our accreditation. Please pray for me as I meet with several of our staff for planning meetings there. A key issue is finding someone to run our Chuuk teaching facility when our present coordinator goes on furlough this summer.
Finally, Joyce and I celebrated her 49th birthday this past weekend. We had a nice dinner out on Saturday night and had friends over for dinner on Sunday. Don't worry. She is not slowing down. She will be helping the deans at PIBC this semester especially with driving students to ministries and other needs, taking two classes and putting in about 20 hours per week at the pre-school.

Back To Work - Goals For 2007

Michael, Samantha and Titus have returned to Palau and preparation meetings for the Spring semester will begin on Monday. The semester starts on January 22. I will be teaching one class - Wisdom Literature - by a combination of intensive classroom discussion and distance education. Here are a few of my goals for the upcoming semester. I'd appreciate your prayers that God would work through me as I work to accomplish them.

1. Complete the first PIBC distance education class that will simultaneously serve all the PIBC sites. (Last semester's DE class was limited to Guam and Palau.) This will also include the setting up and running of an online PIBC "ministry and theology" chat community that will serve PIBC students and staff and pastors and church workers in Micronesia.
   
2. Complete a comprehensive fund raising proposal for PIBC board approval. This should then be implemented during the Summer of 2007. Our long term goal is to find 500 people or individuals who will support the annual budget of PIBC at $1000 or more per year. The main purpose of this would be to enable PIBC to hire qualified local teachers and fill other positions that missionaries usually cannot fill.
   
3. Produce a new PIBC video and other attractive, up-to-date, promotional materials. I hope to have these ready for this summer's furlough.
   
4. Complete a full curriculum revision for the 2007-8 catalog. This will include the addition of "minor strands" to our Bible program which will better prepare each student for their particular area of ministry. They would include pastoral ministries, missions, Christian ed, elementary ed, pre-seminary, teaching English as a second language etc.
   
5. Visit all our supporting churches and as many interested individuals this summer as possible. We need to bring in some new ministry partners to our prayer and financial support team. If you would like to have Joyce and I in your church, Bible study, missions group etc to talk about Micronesia and PIBC, please email me and we can arrange it.
   

Of course, I include a couple more family pictures.... Titus and I watching the NFL playoff game and Missy and Michael with their Guam shirts.

Missy Arrives, Michael, Samantha and Titus Leave Tomorrow

It has been a while since I have posted. We have been pretty busy spending time with our kids and taking a break from work. I think we go to the beach more in the couple weeks that our kids are here than we do in the other 11 months of the year combined. We have BBQ'd at Ipao Beach, swam at Ritidian and hiked to Sharks Hole. It has been a nice relaxing time and I have even been able to read four or five non-class related books.

Missy arrived Tuesday night. She and Titus seemed to have hit it off right away. We all went down to Chamorro Village last night and had a Chamorro Fiesta Plate. See the picture of Missy and Titus with the caribao taken there. Last night we had our belated Christmas with Missy and will finally take down our Christmas Tree and burn it tonight.

Michael, Samantha and Titus will go back to Palau tomorrow night. It will be really hard to see that baby go! He has grown so much just in the couple weeks he has been here. I will be going down to Palau to teach a class in February so I will get to see him again then. Please keep Mike and Sam in your prayers. They have a big decision to make in the next few weeks regarding where they will be for the next school year. Their choices are go to seminary, return to teach at Emmaus in Palau or teach at a school where they can save some money for seminary.

I begin meetings next week to prepare for the beginning of next semester on January 22. More about that later...