Prayer Requests at the End of November

We are enjoying having Joyce's parents here. We are trying not to keep them too busy. They have been helping the Plaxtons move into their house, have worked a little on the campus and Dale will be preaching at Agana Heights Baptist on Sunday. It was fun to go there last Sunday. Joyce and I had not been there in a while. We are still giving them time to read and work on jigsaw puzzles. The pictures are from last Sunday and were taken at Latte Stone Park in Agana. Here are some prayer requests...

1. We are having a get-together and game day tomorrow with students from Guam Community College and University of Guam. Our students have invited several students from there to come over, play basketball, barbeque, sing and enjoy Christian fellowship. We have enjoyed having some GCC and UOG students with us in our chapels the last few days. Please pray that these students will see and experience Christ through our students.
2. We have an administrative council meeting on Monday and Tuesday. We have several important issues to discuss including our process to reaffirm our accreditation. Please pray for God's direction and wisdom.
   
3. PIBC still has a critical shortage in faculty and staff, especially in Chuuk. We need two master degreed Bible/theology teachers and two English teachers in Chuuk by August of 2008. We prefer a Masters degree for our English teachers but could use someone with a TESOL certificate. We are getting to the point where we would have to severely cut back our work in Chuuk. Right now we have just under 100 students in our two Chuuk sites.
   
4. We are down to the last three weeks of the semester. The stress level is rising for teachers and students. Please pray that we will finish well.
   

We are so thankful for all the prayers and support for the ministry of PIBC. May God Bless.

PIBC Thanksgiving Dinner Pictures

As promised here are a few pictures of of our PIBC Thanksgiving banquet. As you can tell I am excited to be back where it is warm and to be back with our PIBC family. We got to do most of the traditional Thanksgiving activities including talking to all three of our kids (by phone or computer), eating plenty of turkey and fixings (several times already), watching lots of football (though it comes on very early in the morning here) and sitting around with full bellies. Last night Joyce and I even went out and began our Christmas shopping. After my long trip it was nice to come home and have a couple days to recover. I am still getting up a little early but the jet lag is not too bad.

We still have a full house. We were all over at Tim and Melody Plaxton's new house yesterday. They are painting, repairing etc to get everything ready to move in this coming week. It has also been great to have Joyce's mom and dad here for the holidays.

Yesterday I went to see our PIBC basketball team play. We lost by 10 but we are qualified for the playoffs which begin next week. We have 3 1/2 weeks left in the semester. I sent out progress reports to all my Prophetic Literature students yesterday. Some of them have put off too much until the end and will have to work very hard to get everything in. We appreciate your prayers as we hit the home stretch of the semester.

Happy Thanksgiving

I am back on Guam after four weeks away on a recruiting trip. We had a great Thanksgiving feast yesterday with our students and staff. As you eat your turkey, stuffing and cranberries we are well into our leftovers. I will post some pictures of yesterday's feast tomorrow since we left our camera with the pictures on it, at school. Joyce had to work today so she will pick it up on the way home. We are missing our family - one of the few downsides to the missionary business - so I will post some pictures of our family that I took while on the road the last few weeks. In the meantime, here are a few of the things that Joyce and I are thankful for as we sit here today....

1. We are thankful that God called us to work in a warm place, especially after my experience of the last couple weeks. Steve and Anne we are praying for you to stay warm there!
   
2. We are thankful for the way that God takes care of our families - especially our kids and grandson - even though they are far from us. And we are thankful for modern communications which allows us to have free video conversations with them. In the 80's we called home from Palau once a year on Christmas and it cost $4.00 per minute.
3. We are thankful for our Micronesia family - the students, staff, faculty and friends at PIBC. This is just an example that God keeps his promise that when we leave things to follow him, like family, he more than gives it back.
   
4. We are thankful for friends all over the world that continue to bless us, like so many that I saw on the mainland the last few weeks.
   
5. We are thankful that we can have Joyce's mom and dad here with us for the next few months - even though my mother-in-law keeps reminding me of how much better the Cowboys are than the 49ers. :)
   
6. Most of all we are thankful for eternally meaningful work and eternally meaningful relationships made so by our relationship with the resurrected Lord. And the bonus is that we also graciously get all things (Romans 8.32).
   

Happy Thanksgiving.

It's Snowing!

I woke up this morning to the beginnings of a snow fall and the snow has continued to come down steadily all morning. We are under a severe weather snow advisory until 6:00 PM this evening. I enjoyed my five minutes out there in the snow and then came back inside where it is warm. I have decided not to do the shirtless snow picture this year. I am sure the entire world is breathing a sigh of relief there. :) I am praying that the weather does not effect my 5:30 AM Monday flight out of Newark. (I'll be back on my tropical island at 7:00 PM Tuesday.)


I had a good time last evening with Steve and Anne Stinnette after yesterday's meetings. (More on the meetings below) Steve will be seeing a doctor this week to see about a special contact lens that may enable him to deal with his eye problem without surgery. While he is receiving medical treatment he will be living at Schooley's Mountain where he and Anne will serve as missionaries in residence. They will be able to speak to the many retreat center guests about the global mission work of Liebenzell, especially Pacific Islands Bible College and hopefully transfer their passion for missions to many of the church groups (The LM-US retreat center hosts a lot of immigrant church groups from the surrounding area) that come up here on the mountain. We, of course, would like to see them back on Guam ASAP but we wait and pray for God's timing on that.

We were privileged yesterday to be part of the installation of Bill and Barb Schuitt as the new Global Director of Liebenzell Mission USA. They served with Joyce and I in Palau back in the 1980's as the principal of Bethania High School and they have served on several other fields as well. We are all very excited about what they bring to the mission and I am looking forward to ministering together with them. Bill will replace George Hege on the PIBC governing board at the upcoming meeting in March 2008.



Overall, I thought the meetings went very well. Here are some of the key decisions that came out of the meetings this weekend.

1. PIBC is a partnership between the various Liebenzell Mission boards and the school. The Liebenzell leadership sees the need to expand the PIBC Board and include new partners in the support and running of the school. LMI will work together with PIBC leadership to find organizations and individuals who can partner with us for the continued growth of the school.
   
2. The land ownership of the Guam campus will go to LM Germany and PIBC will have a long term lease with the mission.
   
3. PIBC will widen its focus to some kind of a liberal arts major that will prepare our students for careers in the islands, especially teaching, and to produce biblical thinkers who will be Christian servant leaders in the church and whatever career they pursue.
   
4. PIBC and LM-USA will cooperate more closely in fund raising and recruiting. I am looking forward to working with Bill and Steve on this.
   

We were also able to deal with a lot of smaller issues and discuss personnel. I believe a lot of gaps were bridged this weekend and we are much closer to a unified vision for PIBC and the work in Micronesia. This afternoon I plan to go out and do some shopping (I have a small list of stuff to bring back to Guam) with Steve and Anne and maybe stay indoors and watch a little NFL. Next post I should be back on Guam.

Global Committee Meetings

The global committee meetings actually began last night with a dinner to celebrate the 25 th anniversary of Hans Gegenbach with the Liebenzell Mission at Charlie Brown's steak house. Hans came in from Germany that evening with Liebenzell Mission International executives Detlef Krause and Martin Auch. Jake Koch, the director of Liebenzell Canada and several of the LMUSA staff and board joined us as well. We had a relaxed evening of catching up on each others' lives and talking about Liebenzell's ministries around the world. There were also more than a few funny stories and jokes told.

On Friday morning the actual meetings began. We had several PIBC and Micronesia strategy and personnel issues to be discussed. We are facing a crisis situation on our Chuuk campus because of a shortage of personnel. With our leadership spread across the world it is just good to once in a while to get in the same room, see each others' faces and hear each other's voices on the issues. I was thankful for the spirit of camaraderie and unity displayed in the meeting and I think we resolved many long burning issues.

After lunch we met with the LMUSA Global Committee. Again the issue (of my part of the meeting) was how the various parts of Liebenzell Mission could work together with PIBC and how we could bring new partners into the work. There seemed to be great agreement on the vision for the school and a renewed commitment to work together to accomplish it. I am excited about the new people coming in to leadership in Global Ministries and looking forward to see what God is going to do. Today's meetings ended with presentations about the mission's work around the world. I'm looking forward to the LMUSA Board meeting tomorrow.

Pennsylvania

I have just returned to Schooleys Mountain from a one day trip to Pensylvania to visit friends. It was a long but beautiful drive through the Mennonite country. I first visited George Hege, former Global Director of Liebenzell USA in Reading. (I was in Redding CA and in Reading PA on this trip - hmm) It was great to see him and get caught up on how their church plant is doing. I always enjoy bouncing my ideas off George and getting his input. We also had a good Mexican lunch. Thanks George.



I then drove from Reading to Lewisburg to visit Graham and Joan Rogers. I had the opportunity to drive through some thick mountain fog but the trip was enjoyable. Graham and Joan pastored the Agat Community Church in Guam for many years and are old friends. I showed my Guam pictures and we did a lot of reminiscing about old times there. I also told him that we have several positions available for him at PIBC. After lunch today I headed back to Schooleys. I drove through the beginnings of a snow storm in the Poconos but made it back OK. Tonight the group from Germany will come in and the meetings will start. More later.

Day One at Schooleys Mountain

I had a good first full day at Schooley's Mountain. First off, I have a washing machine where I am staying so I was able to wash and dry all my clothes. Then I had breakfast with LMUSA board member Norm Dietsch. We had a good time discussing the mission's strategy for PIBC and sharing "old missionary" stories. I then spent the rest of the day with our PIBC Palau Teaching Facility Coordinator, Rob Watt. Rob has been on furlough since June and will be returning to Palau in January. We were able to work in a little talk about football, but we mostly talked about setting up the Palau classes for the Spring, strategies for getting more people involved in the Koror church and ways we can help and continue work with our alumni. After dinner Rob headed back to Pennsylvania. I will be going there tomorrow to visit with former LMUSA global director George Hege and Guam friends Graham and Joan Rogers.