Watching Some Weekend Football

After the TRACS conference I was able to take a couple days off to visit friends and watch a little football. Friday night I got to see Josh Ladd's high school football game (son of our former missionary colleagues in Palau, Ernie and Annette Ladd), and then on Saturday we went to the NC State vs. Maryland game. Here are some pictures from the games....

Josh's team Mt. Tabor beat West Forsythe 26-7. Josh played a good game with several effective blocks from the guard and tackle positions. Yes, that is Annette Ladd in the red coat in the foreground of the picture

We had great seats at the game in the 3rd row on the 50 yard line. NC State beat Maryland 38-31.

Here is Josh and I after the game. I had a great time visiting with him at the game. It was nice to have a little time to relax.

TRACS Conference

The TRACS Conference began for us with our meeting with the TRACS Commission on Monday the 2nd. The TRACS commission is a group of administrators from TRACS schools who make the decisions about TRACS' granting of accreditation. We have been accredited with TRACS for 10 years now, so this would be our third meeting with the Commission. In 1999 the commission granted us candidate status and then in 2004 we were granted accredited status which lasts for five years. This time we were up for reaffirmation of accreditation status which normally would last for 10 years. We had completed our Self-Study document back in January and a TRACS evaluation team visited us in May. We then responded to the team's recommendations in the month of September. So Steve Stinnette, Bill Schuit, Howard Merrell and I met with the commission to discuss our school, respond to the commission's questions and hear their decision.

After a lengthy discussion, the TRACS commission decided to defer the decision on our reaffirmation until the April 2010 commission meeting. This means that we continue with our current accredited status and the commission is giving us three months to deal with some issues that we need to improve before they give us a 10-year approval. The main issue we need to work on is our assessment process and then tying our assessment to our long term planning and budgeting process. The commission was pleased with our finances, our development plan and our academics, but felt that the assessment area was important enough to delay the decision. As we left the commission applauded our efforts and encouraged us. We already have our staff working on the documents we will need to produce and present to the Commission in April. Please pray that we will be able to get this done well.

The rest of the TRACS meeting was enjoyable. I learned a lot from several good seminars including one on administering distance education programs and budgeting, planning and assessment. The meals (especially the chocolate cake) and the accommodations were very nice. I actually felt a little funny as a missionary being in a place as fancy as the Grandover Resort. But, the conference was pretty good this year and the time there was well spent in my opinion. One of the best parts of the conference is the interaction with administrators from the other schools. We always make some good connections.  I also won the award for being the attendee who made the longest trip to the conference. I win that often.

Development Meetings in North Carolina

We arrived in Greensboro NC late Sunday night and headed over to David and Jill Mayer's house in Clemmons. The Mayer's are mission partners of the Stinnette's and are very interested in helping the school. I appreciated very much their hospitality. Our purpose to be there was to meet with some of our board members (Bill Schuit flew down from New Jersey and Howard Merrell drove from Virginia) our grant writer and researcher (Katherine Currie drove over from Winston-Salem) and the Mayers (David is an architect who has volunteered to design our campus and Jill is an English teacher) to discuss a development plan for raising finances for the school and how we will use the finances to create a campus that will better meet the needs of our students. Our board had already approved a basic plan for this but we needed to "flesh out" the plan quite a bit.

David Mayer presented a design for the campus that would include the adjoining property that we hope to purchase, beautiful buildings (classrooms, library, admin, dorms and faculty housing), roads and parking and green areas. It was very exciting to me to see stuff, that had been only in my head, actually on paper. We have a lot of work to do and money to raise to make the picture a reality, but I am confident that as God has done miracles to get us this far, He will finish the process. We have already seen God move in a mighty way already to bring us people and resources and we expect to see more of it in the future.

One other development from the meeting was the finalization of our plans for our Summer Certificate in Basic English program on the Guam campus. Thanks to Skype, Jill and I were able to conference with Melody Plaxton on Guam. Our plan is to have Melody and Jill run an 8-week intensive CBE program on the Guam campus in June and July. The program will enable students from the Micronesian islands, Guam and Asia to raise their English level to qualify for entrance into PIU's (or other schools') regular programs. In addition, we hope to have other students who will be trying to improve their English level to enter Guam's job market.  We have already been able to recruit some ESL teachers here in the US who will come to Guam as summer missionaries for this project. Qualifying students will be able to use Title IV funds for this program. We are also working on getting grant money for students who do not qualify for Pell funds. We hope to have 40-60 students depending on how many teachers and staff we have recruited. We will be doing some student recruiting for the program next.

After two days of meeting I think we had everyone pretty much on the same page regarding the steps we need to take to develop PIU into what we think God is calling us to do. Please be in prayer for us as we move forward to raise the money and implement the plans. 

Weekend at my Mom and Dad's Place - Oct 30-31

I know I have not posted for a couple days. Sorry about that. I have been running around all the country for the last few days. I didn't have a cable to download my pictures (forgot it in Guam) but was able to borrow one, so now I can get you caught up on what I have been doing the last 10 days or so.

I spent the last weekend of October at my parents' place. It was a good couple days of relaxation and getting caught up on my email. Dad and I got to watch a couple of football and baseball games together and I was able to spend some time with my sister and her family. We had dinner at the house on Friday and went out for Chinese food on Saturday night (pictured).

Early Sunday morning we picked up Steve Stinnette and went to the airport. We spent Sunday flying from Sacramento through Los Angeles to Greensboro North Carolina.

The Rest of My US Trip Schedule

Several people have asked me to post the schedule for the rest of my US trip, so here it is ....

November 3-6  TRACS Conference Greensboro NC
November 7-8  Winston-Salem NC
November 9  Meeting with Mickey Beckham in South Carolina
November 9-11 Columbia International University, Columbia SC
     Seminary Students Dinner Meeting at Don Howell's home  9th
     Missions and English/TESOL classes at CIU (Recruiting staff and faculty) 10th
     Drive back to Greensboro  11th
November 12-17 Dallas Texas
     Dallas Seminary: Faculty Recruiting 12-13th
     Killeen Texas: Micronesian Group  14th
     Redeemer Bible Church 15th
     Mission and Development Meeting (planning meeting with Roger Doriot discussing bringing Papuan  
     students to PIU and sending mission teams of Micronesians to Papua New Guinea.  16th
    Fly from Dallas to LAX 17th
La Mirada 18th Recruiting and Development Meetings
Phoenix Arizona  19th-20th  Development and Recruiting Meetings
Fly Back to Guam on November 21 and arriving on the evening of the 22nd

I would appreciate your prayers for success recruiting students, finding English, Education and Bible/theology/ministry teachers and a Chief Financial Officer, and finding donors for our annual fund (to hire more faculty and staff) and our capital fund (to expand our property and build a new library, classrooms, dorms and offices.)

Week in Northern California

After Susanville Steve and I spoke in the chapel at Shasta Bible College. (Steve was supposed to take a picture of me too but he forgot so I only have the picture of him :) ) Steve's voice was shot but he made it through the presentation. He used candies and bottles of soft drinks to dramatize how most of the Christian workers in the world are working in the parts of the world that already have heard the Gospel. We then talked about how PIU is equipping missionaries to take the Gospel where it has not been preached. After the presentation I noticed that the Shasta students did not eat as many of the props as our students at PIU did. We also we were interviewed by Shasta Bible College President Dave Nicholas for his radio show. We appreciated the opportunity to talk about the school. We returned to the El Dorado County area that afternoon and watched a little Monday Night Football with my dad. During the next two days we had lunch with Phil Layton the pastor at Gold Country Baptist Church and dessert with Sarah Cain and her parents. Sarah is presently raising support to come out to PIU and help us with media and development. You can read about her ministry and support needs on her blog.

Wednesday was a driving and meeting day. We met Mike Brogna, the missions pastor of 1st Baptist Church of Stockton for breakfast and a discussion of possibilities for sending a mission team there. We then drove over to Foster City and met with Pastor Rob Hall of Central Peninsula Church. CPC is a supporting church of Eric and Karyn Sorenson. We are planning on having our PIU team stop there next summer and we are hoping that some of the CPC team will visit us on Guam in February. We finally made it over to Santa Cruz in the afternoon and met Jo Romaniello and Marci Martinelli at Peet's Coffee Shop. Jo and Marci will be coming over to Guam in January to teach counseling courses at the undergrad and seminary level and help us in our counseling center. We are excited to have them on that way. Later in the evening we stopped in at my brother Doug and his wife Diane's place for dinner and a place to rest. I had a good time watching the World Series with Doug and my niece Taylor. Thanks Doug for a place to crash.

The next morning we had breakfast with the Yap construction ministry team who will be coming out to Micronesia in January from Gateway Bible Church in Scotts Valley. Last year they made a lot of progress in renovating our Yap PIU classroom and will finish it this year. This year they plan to bring a few more guys. You can see from the picture how much more work needs to be done. We enjoyed lunch with Jeff McKim. Jeff has been helping us out with some grant researching. In afternoon I met a couple friends over in San Jose at Starbucks for coffee. Jack Welkley is an old friend from Scotts Valley Baptist days who was one of our 1st mission partners when we went out to Palau in 1984 and he has been a faithful partner ever since. We talked about some possibilities for him to come out and help us with finances some time in the future.

Finally we drove back to Sacramento where we picked up Amy, Steve's daughter at the airport and I dropped them off at their in-laws to spend a couple days. By the time I got back to El Dorado and my parents' place I was ready for bed. It was a busy two days but I was very encouraged at how God is putting PIU on the hearts of many people. We need a lot more people to partner with us and some to come out and help us, and I can see God raising up those people!

Weekend in Northern and Southern California

After a drive back up to La Mirada from San Diego (Milo and I had a little time to get acquainted in the two days I spent in San Diego as you can see from the picture - thank you Sarah) Steve and I met our Liebenzell USA director and PIU chairman of the board at Michael and Samantha's house. Mike and Samantha are in the process of getting approved as Liebenzell USA missionaries and hope to be raising support soon to head back to Guam after Mike graduates next Spring. We spent a couple hours talking about how to get Mike and Sam out by August 2010 so they can be in place for next school year. That evening I made my annual trip to In 'n' Out and got one of their great hamburgers

The next day Steve and I flew up to Sacramento. We flew up with two of the Sacramento Kings players sitting a couple rows in front of me. I didn't get an opportunity to talk NBA basketball with them. We pretty much dropped off our stuff at my parents' place and immediately made the four hour drive to Susanville to speak at the Southern Baptist Church there. We met my former Emmaus student from 1984-5, Jacob Ngiraiblosch, and the pastor of the church, John Murdock there and had a great evening talking about how we can help the ministry to the Micronesians that are spread out all over the US mainland. The next morning we spoke (actually I spoke, Steve had pretty much lost his voice) at both the Palauan and English services at the church. There was a lot of interest in our distance education program from both groups and four Palauan students told us that they are very interested in attending PIU next Fall. I had not really thought about Micronesians on the US mainland as an audience for our DE classes but having them in there would be great. I do appreciate the good prayer and support that comes from the Susanville Palauans and the Southern Baptist Church there.

After lunch Steve and I took a nice drive through Lassen National Park and made it to Redding in time to spend the evening with Joyce's parents, sister Judy and brother-in-law Wayne. We celebrated her dad's birthday by eating pie a-la-mode and watching football. Thanks to TIVO we watched three games in a just a few hours.