March Prayer Requests and Some Guam Scenery

We are having beautiful March weather here on Guam (not too hot with occasional cool rains and breezes) and have hit the mid-point of the semester. Normally I post prayer requests at the beginning of the month but have just now been able to get to them. I better do it today because Joyce and I will be heading to Palau tonight. So here are our main prayer requests for the month of March...

1. Our students seem to hit a slow spot every year this time of the semester, right before Easter vacation. Pray that they will be able to keep their excitement and discipline going and avoid the temptations that often seem to come after them at this point.
2. Our Voices of Micronesia traveling team is raising support for their summer trip to the US Mainland. They have been doing yard work and house repair along with performing at several Guam churches. They need to get the support raised for their airfares by the end March. 
3. We are working on re-establishing and/or growing our Teaching Facilities in Chuuk, Palau and Yap. I was in Chuuk last week (another post on that will be coming) with Steve Stinnette last week and we made some great progress on getting our facility going again there. Joyce and I will head to Palau tonight to meet with church leaders there and I will teach 4 sessions of my Old Testament History class. I plan to go to Yap in April to work on the planned grand reopening of our site there.
4. This may be the most urgent prayer request of the month.... We are interviewing candidates for our VP of Finance and Operations position. We need prayer for discernment to find the person for this key position with the right skill set combined with the desire to minister to staff and students. We are taking a big step of faith here, trusting that God will enable us to raise the money to pay this person, but we believe that God is leading us to hire a local person for the job rather than fill the position with a missionary. 

We appreciate your prayers and interest in what Joyce and I are doing here in Guam and Micronesia through Pacific Islands University. May God Bless!

Pictures of Southern Guam

After church on Sunday morning we took our nephew Ben on a tour of the Southern half of the island of Guam. We took about 5 hours to introduce Ben to the sights there. Sometimes I forget, sitting at my desk in my office, just how beautiful this island is. I guess I need to get out more. So here are a few pictures. Come out and visit us and we'll give you the tour too.

Ben, on the left in Agana Heights overlooking the view of Agana Bay

Ben and I at Latte Stone Park in Agana

 

Out to sea from the beach in Agat.

 

Ben standing in front of the Spanish Bridge in Agat

 

Joyce and Ben overlooking Ceti Bay. We pose every one of our visitors right on this spot. This could be you!

 

Replica of the old fortress in Umatac

 

Ben in front of Umatac Bay. This is where Magellan landed in 1521.

 

View across Umatac bay from the guard tower in Fort Soledad

 

Of course Ben had to ride the carabao

 

Ben poses with Big John at Fort Soledad

 

Ben looks out toward Cocos Island

 

Ben enjoyed the swimming and diving. On the left he leaps into Priest's Pool. On the right he impresses all the locals and Japanese tourists at Inarajan Pools with a ... well I am not sure what that was!

  

I am pointing to the ancient paintings in Gadao's Cave

 

Talofofo Bay. 

 

Looking toward Mangilao and the University of Guam. Back to the center of the island. 5 hours later we are a little sunburned and tired but had an enjoyable day. 

Ministry at Agat Chuukese Fellowship

Today we enjoyed ministry and fellowship on the Southern end of Guam with the Agat Chuukese Fellowship. The PIU Voices of Micronesia Team sang four songs and I preached. The church is pastored by PIU graduate John Jim Phanchy and meets at the Marianas Baptist Church. We have enjoyed many years of partnership with John Jim and the church there. Four of their young people are students at PIU and we hope to see many more of them in the future. I had a good opportunity to share about what is happening at PIU and explain the new programs we have available. I also got to preach on Genesis 1.26-27. Here are a few pictures of our service in Agat this morning.

As usual the Voices of Micronesia sounded great. I think I may have caught them between songs here. 

 

John Jim, me and Ben pose here for a picture after church. We are very thankful for alumni like John Jim and his wife Satrin who are being used in a great way by the Lord to make impact on their communities. 

 

Of course we enjoyed lunch with the group after the service. Here Jayleen and I show that we are indeed mighty at eating hot dogs. After lunch we took Ben around the Southern end of the island to see the sights. I will post pictures of that soon. 

Snake Hunt

Last weekend after we picked up Ben at the airport, we brought him up to the PIU campus to meet everyone there. Most of the PIU faculty and staff were still there wrapping up a dinner and prayer meeting with the PIU board members. As we drove in, the Plaxtons were driving out and we thought we had missed them. But within a minute or so they came back into the campus yelling that they had just run over a Guam Brown Tree Snake. Joyce yelled "snake hunt!" and took off running with the everyone else behind her. The snake was on the road, somewhat stunned from its encounter with the Plaxton's Corolla, but alive and well. Joyce used her well-practiced strategy of stepping on the snake just behind the head as it came at her to defend itself, rendering the snake helpless. She then grabbed it behind the head and was in complete control. After letting several people handle it, we took it home and she put it in the freezer (it is still there). She will trade it to a local craftsman for a snake vertebrae necklace and earrings. The Guam Brown Tree Snake is not an indigenous species to Guam and has wreaked havoc on the local wildlife, almost wiping out the local bird population. The Guam government is doing their best to eradicate the brown tree snake and Joyce is one of their best allies in the effort.

 

Joyce poses with PIU Board Member and Liebenzell Mission International Global Mission Director Martin Auch. It was Martin's first Guam Brown Tree Snake

 

Ben gets to handle the snake his first night on Guam. Some of our staff had been on Guam for years without seeing one. 

 

Students also enjoyed getting up close and personal with the snake. 

 

Marisol Farnsworth expresses her obvious delight in getting to know the snake.

 

Her son, Joel Farnsworth, seems more comfortable with the snake than his mom. However, the snake sensed it was time to make a break for it when Joel had him, but Joyce was able to recapture the snake. We have not seen anywhere near as many snakes on Guam as we used to. Perhaps the eradication efforts are beginning to work. 

Cousin Ben Arrives on Guam

It is always fun for us to have family visit. It is even better when family members come out to visit and help us with the work at PIU. That is why we are so excited to have our nephew, Ben Boudreault come here as a PIU volunteer. Ben arrived on the Saturday night flight and in the few days he has been here has already enjoyed a snake hunt (pictures in the next post), PIU potluck at the Wood's home which has one of the most amazing views on Guam, Sunday church service at the Palauan Evangelical Church, a visit to a Guam auto wrecking yard, an evening of PIU ministry at the University of Guam and the gracious hospitality of our students who seem to want to feed him constantly. In addition, in just 3 days, Ben has already fixed a lawn mower, diagnosed a car problem and has been a great help with several other projects. Ben will be here for three months as a volunteer in our maintenance department. Please pray for Ben that he will have a great experience here at PIU.

You don't have to be one of our family members to be a volunteer at PIU. We need volunteers who can do maintenance projects, work in the office, teach, bookkeepers and many other short, medium or long term projects. If you are interested shoot me an email at dowen@piu.edu or give us a call (Guam is 18 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time) at 671-734-1812.

PIU Annual Board Meeting Completed

The PIU Annual Board Meeting took place this last week, February 24-26. Our seven board members come from 4 different countries and represent several different organizations.On the back row L to R is me, Martin Auch, Harald Gorges, Bill Schuit and Howard Merrell. In the front row, Mary Johnson, Vincent Parren and Marcellus Ngiraingas. It was three long days of meetings but I think a lot was accomplished and the school took some significant steps forward. We did add a new member, David Mayer, to our board who will begin his term on July 1. We have several challenges ahead of us but I am excited and encouraged to be moving forward toward what God has for Pacific Islands University in the future.

PIU Challenges for 2010 #6 - Finances

To meet the previous five challenges, especially the challenges of staffing and facilities, PIU will need to raise significant financial resources. In the beginning PIU was funded by three basic sources: Liebenzell Mission provided the starting capital to buy the property and build the original facilities; most of the staff and faculty were missionaries (Liebenzell or other organizations) who raised their own support or were financed by other organizations; and the remaining operational needs were funded by student tuition. All of these resources were a tremendous provision but, with these alone, the school was pretty much limited to covering its basic operational needs and there was very little for future growth. If PIU was to move forward to accomplish the vision that we believe God is calling us to do we needed to take steps to find the money that we believe God was raising up for us.

So last year we hired a fund raising consultant, Mickey Beckham who was recommended by TRACS, our accreditor. Mickey was excited about the potential of PIU to raise funds and he made the following recommendations which we have followed....

Private and Public Grants: PIU has hired a grant researcher and writer, Katherine Currie, to explore both private foundations and government grants for the school. Since our main constituency is Pacific islanders and over 90% of our students receive Title IV grants we are eligible for many other government grants. We have been able to finance our computer labs on the main campus and our various teaching sites with a public grant and are exploring others. We are also in the process of applying for several grants from private foundations to meet needs in our library, staffing and some smaller capital needs. Please be in prayer for us as we complete and submit  several applications on March 1st.

Rising Tide Annual Fund: Because one of our major goals at PIU is keeping tuition costs affordable for our islander students and providing them a way that they can complete their degrees without being saddled with debt, our tuition will never fully cover operational costs. In addition, as we expand to liberal arts and general education and attempt to increase local hires, we have many faculty and staff positions in the school that cannot be filled by missionaries. To provide the resources to bridge this gap we have begun the Rising Tide Annual Fund. The purpose of the Rising Tide fund is to provide the financial resources to fill essential faculty and staff positions, to enable us to provide scholarships for students, and to support student missions, academic and library  programs.Our goal is to raise $500,000 per year in annual pledged donations to this fund by finding 500 people or organizations that would be willing to donate an average of $1,000 per year (about $84 per month). We are excited that, since this program was launched in January of this year, we already have over $70,000 per year in pledges.

Capital Funds: The final phase of our fund raising program will be a capital fund to finance the expansion of the Guam campus detailed in my last post. The first phase of the capital program will be to raise enough funds to buy the adjoining 3.6 acres. We have an architect coming this summer to make a more detailed proposed building plan for development of the property. The property would then be developed in phases over the next 5 years or so as God provides the resources to build. We plan to finance this through a combination of grants and private donations.

We are confident that God will provide the money as it is needed to accomplish what He is calling us to do. If God is laying it on your heart to be part of the Rising Tide Fund or Capital Fund please send me an email at dowen@piu.edu or call me at 671-734-1812 and we can get you details and information about it or answer any questions you might have. We will soon have all the information available on the school web site at http://piu.edu. We are now able to take payments and donations by credit card and very soon will have a donation button on the web site. 

In some ways it is hard for me to talk about money. But I believe very much that what we are doing here is part of God's kingdom purpose and that any investment in PIU is an investment in the lives of our students and in what God is doing here in the Pacific. I also know that is something that pays off forever.