PIBC Community Group

Last night we had our campus community group over to our house for a little barbecue and fellowship time. Joyce bbq'd the chicken, the Boydstons brought over some salad and dessert and we had a pretty good meal. Our community groups are a good way for the faculty and staff to connect with the students and for the on campus and commuter students to get to know one another better too. After dinner we watched a documentary video about how our present Guam PIBC campus was built back in 1998 by several volunteer groups from Germany and we talked about the investment and sacrifice Liebenzell Mission Germany and these volunteers had made so that we can be here. It was a good reminder. We also looked at old pictures, told jokes and stories. I think a good time was had by all.

This picture is of me with a couple of our commuter students, Rommel Carino and his wife Joy and three kids from the Philippines - and Esther (left-front) from Palau. We have several students now with families (we even have a couple grandparents attending PIBC - it is not just for 20 somethings) and it is always nice to have their whole families involved in campus life.








Alvin and Giftleen (on the left) and Mavrick (on the right also enjoyed the food and fellowship.

PIBC's Proposed New Vision Statement

We have been working on our Pacific Islands Bible College foundational statements lately to bring them in line with the changes we have made in the school's program - general education, minors, seminary, remedial English and study skills - and planned programs, including a teacher certification program and a liberal arts/Christian world view major. In fact, we are also working on changing the name to Pacific Islands University. We would retain the PIBC name for the Bible College part of the university.
With that in mind we have come up with this vision statement (still a work in progress): "PIBC aspires to be a leader in providing accessible, transformational, quality, Christian-based higher education to the people of Micronesia, the Pacific Islands, and to the ends of the earth."

Here is the rationale....
Leader: We still are the only accredited Christian college in the Micronesian islands and on Guam. We believe that PIBC will have a major part to play in providing a Christian influence in the preparation of young men and women from the islands to serve their communities and churches.

Accessible: We provide affordable, local, culturally sensitive and relevant education to the peoples of the Pacific. We are committed to providing American style education within an island context. We are also committed to meeting the academic needs of students who come from academically deficient settings with remedial education. Our students do not have to completely leave behind their islands and cultures to get an American style education.

Quality: We believe that we do not need to sacrifice academic level to make our programs accessible. Our island students are as capable and talented as young people anywhere else in the world. While we try to meet our students needs "where they are" our goal is to produce graduates who are able to function on the same level as those from similar schools throughout the world and are capable of taking leadership in the global community and church.

Transformational: We are a Christian college, and thus, our desire is to see all our students be uniquely "conformed to the image of Christ." We nurture the spiritual life of our students and challenge them to embrace responsible and accountable lifestyles that reflect a passion for the kingdom of God.

Micronesia... to the ends of the earth: PIBC is committed to training Micronesians. other Pacific islanders and people from the many cultures that call the islands home to be part of the command of Jesus to "make disciples" of the peoples of all the earth. Our prayer and goal is that our graduates would make an impact for Christ in their homes and throughout the world.

Sunday

Last Sunday was the last day of my four week Sunday school series at the Guam Lutheran Church. It is always fun to teach there and not just because of the incredible view. (Michael and Samantha got married on the beach just outside the church.) Brad Boydston said he was watching a dolphin jumping just outside the reef while I was teaching. They have a great group of people there and the discussion is always interesting. I was teaching on "cults" (a greatly misused word and often meaningless or hostile in common usage) and decided, instead of just going through "this group is a cult because..." we would talk about what makes a group "cultish" and how can we avoid these kinds of beliefs and practices in our own groups and individual lives. The group pretty much ran with it and we had four weeks of lively discussion. I think everyone got something they could apply. In the picture Joyce is standing in our driveway as we get ready to leave for church. She made the dress!

Sunday night we went to the Wood's house to celebrate Bill's 70th birthday. We ate chicken and ice cream, visited with each other and had a hymn sing which featured Bill playing hymns in his own very entertaining style. It is a lot of fun and, in my opinion, our group sounds pretty good. There are so many of us now, that it is pretty much impossible to fit us all in any of our houses. It is a blessing to have so many (yes we still need to fill some positions) working at PIBC but, it is a REAL blessing to work with people you like and trust (and can carry a tune!).

Palau Independence Day

Saturday Joyce and I went down to Ypao park to celebrate the 14th Palau Independence Day. Pretty much the entire Palauan community on Guam was there and many of the candidates, or their representatives, for Palau president and legislature were there campaigning. Each of the Palau states sets up a booth overflowing with Palauan food and barbeque, there is Palauan music and dance and many other activities. We enjoyed getting to see many of our Palauan friends we have not seen in a while. The picture here with Joyce is of Asteria Dennis. Asteria used to attend Yigo Baptist when we were ministering there. We had not seen her in a while (how is it on an island this small you can go so long without seeing someone?) and it we were happy to hear that she and her family are doing well.

We mostly hung around at the celebration with John Aitaro and his wife Danette. John has been a student at PIBC for the last few years and works full time at one of the local hotels. They are also active in ministry leadership at the Guam Palauan Evangelical Church. John made sure that Joyce and I had plenty of chicken, pork, ribs, fish, shrimp etc. (John and I were both OK with the full food plates as we had scrimmaged with the PIBC basketball team the day before) The only disappointment was that we did not get there early enough before the taro leaf soup was gone. We brought home so much food we are still eating off of the leftovers. We also enjoyed getting to meet some other members of John's extended family and seeing other Palauan friends we had not seen in some time. It was a perfect day for it as the rain held off for most of the day and the clouds kept things nice and cool.

Blogs I Read

There are so many good blogs out there and web sites that are worth checking out (among others that are not so good and just wasters of time), that one cannot read them all and still have a meaningful life in the non-virtual world. I have to limit myself or I would be reading on line 24 hours a day and never get anything done. So I thought I would let you know the web sites I take the time to visit regularly.

Just look to the right at my links and you will see the blogs of family members and co-workers. I try to read those regularly so I know what is going on in their lives. You can get a lot of different perspectives about life at Pacific Islands Bible College and in Micronesia by clicking on the links to the right.

I do my social networking on Facebook. I am in the Pacific Islands Bible College, Biola, Dallas Seminary and Baymonte Christian School groups. Send me a friend request and I will connect with you.

My favorite theological web sites are:
Darrell Bock my prof at Dallas Seminary. He has a good post on the Christian response to the current US economic crisis.
The Scriptorium: The Torrey Program of Biola site. There is always interesting commentary here on theology, culture, politics and even some funny stuff
Ben Witherington: A prof at Asbury seminary and New Testament scholar who comments on a wide range of issues from scholarly theological papers to movie and music reviews.
Jesus Creed: This is Scot McKnight's blog. He is a Religion prof at North Park University. This is the best blog I have seen for reading theological discussion on a wide range of issues from a wide range of perspectives. His latest post on why he is not Roman Catholic or Orthodox was excellent.
N. T. Wright: This site has a good collection of NT Wright papers and audio. He always has an interesting perspective on things. Thank you Michael for sending me there.
Blue Passport: is a missiology blog by RG Lewis a veteran missionary and missionary-trainer. He always makes me evaluate my effectiveness in cross-cultural discipleship.
Ship of Fools: This is an English site that points out the funny and weird in the church. Guaranteed to make you laugh as you cry at the stupid things evangelicals do world-wide. I especially enjoy the Fruitcake Zone and Gadgets for God.

I do also spend some time on ESPN.com and Foxsports.com to keep up with my SF 49ers, Sacramento Kings and Oakland A's.

Maybe some time we can talk or play a game of Challenge Sudoku on line!

Computer Community

One thing that has really changed for missionaries over the last few years is the ability to stay in contact with the people at home. With email, blogs, facebook and myspace we can stay in almost daily contact with family, friends and churches (Well, except for sometimes when we are away from Guam and out in FSM or Palau - there is still no affordable broadband out there and internet access is sometimes unreliable, although we have video and audio skyped from Chuuk a couple times) It has been a lot of fun to reconnect with some people that we have not seen or talked to in a long time with these networking programs. It also is a great help with missions meetings, church communication and keeping in contact with PIBC personnel spread around the world. We now have our executive board meetings by Skype with one member in Germany, one on the US mainland and me on Guam. We are also developing our on-line distance education capacity and have offered our first fully DE course this semester.

Of course the best thing about this kind of communication is staying in touch with our grandchildren and being able to be part of their lives even though we are so far away. Last weekend we got to video conference with Michael, Samantha and the kids. Titus' 2nd birthday is today so we will send him an audio birthday card. We did get to see him sing songs, dunk the basketall in his hoop, read his books and perform we are not sure what it was. Titus and I even bump fists on the camera. We got to see how much Courage has grown and how active she has become. And, as good grandparents we click away on the camera taking pictures. (Here are some of the pics we took) It is not quite the same as being there, but we thank God that we can spend time with them through the internet.

Joyce in Community

Joyce has one big advantage over all the other missionaries. She is both a student and teacher at PIBC and is part of both communities. She is working to finish up her BA (she took a 25+ year break to raise three kids). She has completed her minor and her general education but still needs several Bible and Theology courses to finish. As a student she spends a lot of time with the other students doing homework and projects together and participating in classroom, on-line and other discussions as a student. Because she is one of them and is a very open, accepting person the students like to confide in her. She really enjoys the times when she can just be "one of the students." Here is Joyce with the Palauan students - since we spent so much time in Palau, Joyce is an honorary Palauan student.

Joyce also is teaching the community ESL class (in addition to her English teaching at the Japanese school), team teaching the class with Kent Boydston. Last week they had a birthday party in the class for one of the Chinese students. I guess, you could say that Joyce is also part of the staff as she works with Tim Plaxton doing building maintenance and helps out in the office. In the picture here the "girls" (Joyce, Evelyn Suda, Melissa Heck and Hollie Schuab) are celebrating Hollie's birthday.



Many of our students struggle financially. One of the ways we help them out is to employ them to do different jobs. A couple days ago Joyce brought over Rambo and TJ (students from Chuuk) to work with her to trim some tree branches in our yard. Now, Joyce is a pretty good tree climber herself, but she was amazed at how these guys could move through the trees - amazing balance! (Here is Rambo in the tree with TJ in front of it). We were also amazed that they could stand and work on limbs that look so small they could barely hold a bird. These times away from school are great times to get to know the students better and give them a chance to earn some spending money. Joyce was also happy to get a lot of yard work done.