Graduation Preliminaries

In many ways this year's graduation was a microcosm of the 2010-11 school year. We had a host of logistical difficulties but the main result was fantastic. Before the ceremony we prayed for no rain and that things would go smoothly. Instead, we got bucket-loads of rain, an island-wide power outage that lasted from about 30 minutes before the scheduled start of the ceremony to about 10 minutes after the ceremony concluded, and a key speaker was held up and arrived late. At least, this year the graduation caps and gowns arrived in the mail on time. Nevertheless, we had our donated canopies which kept the rain off of us, our generator cranked up and kept the sound system and everything else running smoothly and the lieutenant governor arrived just as we were ready to start. According to everyone I talked to the graduation ceremony was a great success, people were blessed and the graduates were honored. Just as, though we had some great financial and personnel difficulties this year, we saw amazing growth in our students and that is what really counts. Here are a few pictures of the events as we got ready for the graduation ceremony. Next post will be pictures of the actual ceremony.

Joyce tries on cap and gown before we head to school for the ceremony and then we get a picture together in our regalia.

The Pacific Daily News photographer snaps a picture of Joyce before the ceremony. The picture is a little dark because the power was out throughout the building.

Graduation Practice

Over the next few days I will be posting some pictures of our PIU graduation. We took a lot of pictures and, I thought this year I would post more than just a sample, so I'll break up the pictures into several posts. Here are a few pictures of the graduation practice on Monday morning the 9th. Practice is always kind of a bittersweet time because we know most of the students will be moving on from PIU. We are happy for them but will miss them. Also, at this point, we always have logistical problems pop up, which always seem to get solved before the ceremony. It was just nice, for me, to have some time to sit and talk with students about what God is doing in their lives and hear their future plans.

Melody Plaxton gives the staff and faculty instructions about the program. While we were practicing the staff song, students were setting up the chairs that we borrowed from UOG. The rental for the canopies was donated by the Lutheran Church of Guam. Thank you to UOG and LCG!

Dr. Bill Wood demonstrates to the grads the proper way to do the "pomp and circumstance walk" 

Looks like they got it!

The grads do one last practice of the class song. The song was written by one of the graduates.

2011 Baccalaureate Service for PIU

On May 8th PIU held its 2011 Baccalaureate Service at Onnuri Church in Mangilao. We have 17 graduates most of whom participated in the ceremony. It turned out to be a beautiful service and our salutatorian did a great job with her speech (see video of Joyce's speech attached here if you haven't already seen the Facebook version) even though we were a little late getting there because our car battery was drained and would not start.  We also enjoyed our keynote speaker, Tony Beckham, as he exhorted us, from the story of the miracle of the multiplication of oil, to be responsible for our part in God's miracles. Here are a few pictures of the service...

The graduates about to sing their class song.

The ladies are ready for the service as Mei helps Joyce get ready for her speech.

Student Lawrence Yinolang was the master of ceremonies

Mike and Kevin led the music

All the students sang a song together

We also honored Tim and Melody Plaxton. They will be ending their term at PIU at the end of July. We are thankful for their service here. 

Joyce and Mike discuss philosophy after the service

 The graduates 

PIU Faculty-Staff Party

Now that I have a little bit of time I will try to get caught up with some posting of May events at PIU. One of our traditional activities is an end of year party for the PIU faculty and staff. This year we held the event at Lisa Collins' home. It was a pretty laid back affair this year with some good food and lots of fun. The main event was the giving out of  "awards" which were put together by Lisa and Samantha. Instead of getting the "best dressed" which I expected I got the "best dancer" award for the amazing dance moves I threw out there during the PIU Days celebration. Don't worry, except for me, no one was hurt by any of my dance moves. Joyce received the "most encouraging" award.

Mike Owen and May Vigil receive their "best dressed" awards.

Hartmut Scherer earned the Moodle award for  his excellent handling of our distance education web site.

Titus and Samantha look on. We do serious ministry at PIU, and it is not always easy, but it is nice to work with a group of people that enjoy being together and, very importantly, can laugh together.

Dave and Joyce Owen Prayer Requests for May

We are done with another school year and headed into the summer semester. I have already taught two full weeks of my seminary Old Testament Survey class and Joyce is a couple weeks into a new term at the Japanese school. We have had a tough semester in many ways but some amazing things have happened for the school and in the lives of students and staff this year for which we are very thankful. As we head into the summer, here are the most urgent items that you could be praying about for us....

1. Our son Mike (pictured preaching in Palau last week with crutches behind the podium) has been having a lot of trouble with his knee all semester. Recently Mike had x-rays taken and visited an orthopedist to review the x-rays. From what the doc could tell, it looks as though a bone fragment has come off and is preventing his left leg from fully straightening. The doctor ordered an MRI and Mike had his appointment for his MRI today at noon. He will have his follow-up appointment with the orthopedist on Tuesday. Samantha says, "So, at this point, we really don't know much for sure, other than, unless God intervenes, this won't be a simple fix! For the time being, we are resting in His grace and taking one step at a time. We so appreciate your prayers for our family as we seek to determine exactly what is wrong and if/how it can be fixed. We also appreciate your prayers for the medical staff who will be working with us; so far we've had a great experience and have felt the Lord's grace and provision in our situation already.
2. Normally at this time of year PIU begins to be a little tight on funds. This year, because of the uncertainty about Pell Grant funds lowering our student numbers for summer school, and the fact that we did not meet our fund raising goals for this year, we are in a very critical situation. Please pray with us that we can raise about $100,000 to get us through the summer. We have several grant applications out there and some money promised but we are ultimately looking for God to provide. This is not the worst situation we have ever been in but we urgently need God and His people to come through as never before. Donations can be made on the PIU web site or mailed to PIU, 172 Kinneys Road Mangilao Guam 96913 
3. We have three student missionary teams out already this summer. Three students are doing ministry in Mexico City. We also have several students doing youth ministry in Yap and another small group working in an unnamed Asian nation.  Please pray that all three groups are able to connect people to the love of Christ and that this becomes a great experience in the spiritual development of each team member. 

We do appreciate all the prayer and support for our ministry as missionaries with Liebenzell Mission USA and for Pacific Islands University. May God bless!

I'm Back

I know it has been a while since I last posted. I have been quite busy with the end of the semester and then a quick trip to Palau for meeting with church leaders, visiting alumni and recruiting students. I have several posts planned over the next couple days with some pictures and comments about what we have been up to including Joyce's salutatorian speech at the Baccalaureate service. First though are some pictures and story of the graduation from the Guam Pacific Daily News quoted below. You can find the whole article at the Guam PDN web site here.

"Although rain and an islandwide power outage threatened to ruin their graduation ceremony yesterday afternoon, the Pacific Islands University class of 2011 simply wouldn't let that happen. And as if the weather knew that it had no chance of ruining their day of celebration, the sun came out shining just in time for the graduates' entrance. PIU students dodged the newly made puddles dotting the campus grounds with smiles on their faces and walked toward the sea of canopies set up for their outdoor graduation. While the ceremony was considered small and intimate, the excitement and cheers from the crowd easily rivaled that of much larger schools."

PIU graduated 17 students -- some receiving their associate's degree, others their bachelor's degree, and one her master's. In fact, the school gave its first master's degree to Peng Li Johnson -- a milestone for both Johnson and the university. The Mangilao school had two valedictorians this year, Xuefen Mei and Grateful Nokar, who tied with a grade point average of 4.0. Joyce Owen, who had the second highest GPA, was selected as salutatorian.

Lt. Governor Ray Tenorio served as the ceremony's commencement speaker and encouraged the graduates to "take the good and the bad experiences and learn from it." Before stepping away from the podium, Tenorio commended the school and students for its faith-based education system. Staff and faculty then sang "Holy, Holy, Holy" to their former students as a gift and fond farewell. After all the special speeches, students filed to the back of the canopies to be called up to receive their diplomas. Graduates each chose a special Bible passage that was read while walking to receive their diplomas, which led some to tears."


I will be posting more on Palau and end of the semester activities very soon.

Creative Projects on Last Evening of Seminary Class

This semester Mike and I have been team-teaching the Pacific Islands Evangelical Seminary course Basic Exegesis and Bible Study Methods. Each Tuesday night of the semester we have been working our way through passages of scripture showing the students how to do accurate interpretation of the text. Tuesday night they presented their creative projects about how they would creatively teach what they had learned about how to do exegesis of scripture. Mondale, pictured, compared biblical interpretation to building and piloting a canoe. All four projects were very good. Mike and Sam's blog has a much more detailed post on the projects that were just presented along with the final projects presented in the Teaching Youth and Children class. This is always one of my favorite classes to teach and it provided extra enjoyment to teach it with Mike.