May you have a blessed new year in 2007! We pray that you will know God in a deeper way as you go through the year. Happy New Year From Joyce and I, and Michael, Samantha and Titus. By the way, we will be on the US mainland from June 1 to August 9. If you would like us to speak at your church, Bible study or mission group, or just want to talk to us about what God is doing at PIBC and in Micronesia just send us an email and we will work hard to get to over to see you.
Just wanted to let you know that the PIBC web site http://pibc.edu is updated and new. If you have not taken a look at it lately you might want to click over there. Also, if you would like to keep up with what our Yap Mission Team is doing, one of our students, Mac Alfonso, is blogging about it with pictures. Here are a couple more pics of our vacation time with Michael, Samantha and Titus.
We are enjoying our Christmas vacation (PIBC shuts down all its operations from December 24 to January 2 to give the faculty, staff and workers a much needed rest.). Of course we have spent most of it just spending time with Michael, Samantha and Titus. But we have got out of the house a little. On Christmas afternoon Michael and I went over to the school to enjoy a couple hours of pick up basketball with Guam Palauan Evangelical 
Church group. It was good to burn off
a few of those Christmas dinner calories and have some good fellowship. We spent the afternoon at the beach the next day with the PIBC gang, BBQing and swimming. It does get colder on Guam in December. The temperature drops into the low 80's. Last night I had the opportunity to perform a wedding for some old family friends - the Mendiola's - that go back to our Yigo Baptist days. I am hearing a lot of feedback from people who want to see more of Titus so I am trying to include him in all the pictures. I am still working on putting video on this site.
"the Word became human and allowed God's glorious presence to live among us" (John 1:14).
We picked up our son Michael, his wife Samantha and our grandson Titus at the airport on Thursday. For me that was the beginning of Christmas vacation. They are missionary-teachers at Emmaus High School in Koror, Palau where Joyce and I started our missionary service in 1984. We have had fun getting reacquainted with Titus. He has grown so much since October. He is now looking at everything, figuring out that he can control his hands (and all the people around him) and making lots of noise.
Joyce's 2-3 year olds did a great job and were very cute as little melting snowmen with funny hats. The pre-school is a great opportunity for Joyce to minister the gospel to her kids and their parents. We are planning to go to the Bayview Baptist Christmas eve morning service and then see the Covenant Players Christmas Eve presentation in the evening. We will then have a late Christmas Eve dinner with our friends Tony and May Vigil and many other friends. Most of us are far apart from our families so we become each others' families.
Today was the last day of the semester before Christmas Break. My Old Testament class took their Final exam last night and our Cults class had its last discussion meeting this afternoon. Joyce closed her semester by presenting her linguistics class (pic below) project. I will be spending my Saturday tomorrow grading exams and papers to be ready to have my grades in by next Friday. My cults students still have until Wednesday to submit their assignments to me. It will be nice to have a couple quiet weeks and enjoy some time off. I know the students had a relieved look on their faces this evening.
when they return for graduation in May. I also had a chance to pray with the 10 students who will be leaving this week for a PIBC mission trip to Yap. Please pray for Hiob, Hollie and Ned as they lead the students in this ministry to youth and children on Yap.
As we head into the last week of the semester I thought it would be a good thing to look back and praise God for some of the exciting things that have happened at PIBC over the past few months. Please join us in thanking God for … The growing openness among the students to share their heart issues with us and trust us to help them.
The great unified team spirit among the faculty and staff.
The successful launching of our distance education program. Students from
God’s wonderful provision of a new dorm room and kitchen dining room (Quik space cargo container conversions), dorm furniture (from a sale at the Hilton), and other assorted physical needs being met at very low cost to us.
Provision for the financial needs of the students, especially the recent reception of the
1. For good rest for students, staff and faculty over the Christmas break.
2. For the student mission trip to 
3. For the acceptance of the revision of the “scope of work” list for our distance education grant from the USDA. This would provide all the equipment we need to make all of our sites into distance learning centers. This would be the first step in our plan to have a center in every island group for Bible and ministry training.
4. Many of our students struggle with family issues, addictive behaviors and other such problems. We will be starting counseling/accountability/encouragement groups on the
the person who thought of it.) We drove through Hotel Row to enjoy the new Christmas light displays. Though there was a lot of traditional Christmas display - reindeer, Santa Claus and elves, Nativity scenes, Christmas stars and winter snow scenes - the displays also worked in coconut trees, latte stones, Santa and elves in tropical wear - shorts and zorries- and starfish. Both of us commented on how much we enjoyed the Christmas season on Guam. There is a traditional, but different, island feel all at the same time. I said, yes, Guam has a very different ambiance and Christmas - in fact it is a "Guambiance."
Playing in the snow, inside the mall...
We have just finished up an enjoyable Thanksgiving with our PIBC family. (Pictures to follow in a later posting) We do miss our kids a lot on these family days so I thought it would be fun to look at
a few old Owen family pictures
. I think the first one is from 1996, the second from 1998 and the third from Matt's wedding in the summer of 2005. We pray that you enjoy your time to enjoy and thank God for all the wonderful blessings he has givin us. HAPPY THANKGIVING!!
She is OK but still in a little pain. Basically the format of the weekend was for the students to hear three messages, have group discussions and individual meditation times after each one, play games and have a lot of time to play at the beach. We had 2 faculty members (Brad Boydston and I) and a guest speaker, Paul Castillo a Navy chaplain, bring the messages. The theme was "Don't Waste Your Life." I enjoyed sitting with the guys discussing the messages and hearing what God was doing in their lives. We also had time to play silly games and just talk and get to know each other better. It is exciting to hear what God is doing in the lives of the students. Please keep praying for them that they will keep listening to God and they will see him overcoming the obstacles in their lives. Also many of our students are struggling with other issues that threaten to divert them from what God is calling them to do. They can use your prayers too. Here are some more pictures of some of the activities of spiritual emphasis weekend... 
golf shorts all day. Friday is the day I finally get back into the classroom after a month away. While I was gone I have been interacting with my Cults distance education class students by internet chat, threaded discussion and email but today I was back in the regular classroom. I always enjoy our Friday class because it is in full discussion format. I come prepared with a couple questions. Today, since we are studying Oneness Pentecostalism, my questions dealt with the how's and why's of non-Trinitarian views and the problems with the added requirements for salvation of extreme Arminian views. The students always seem to bring up an unexpected side to the issue. Then we move on to issues the students choose to bring up. Since last week's subject was Post-Modernism, most of the students' questions related to relativistic views of truth. So class was a lot of fun today. As always, I came out of the class pumped up and wanting more.
After almost a month on the road, I am finally back on Guam and it is great to be back. Except for my 10 pound weight gain from all the good food on the trip I would say it was very successful. I have a pile of resumes to sort through from interested prospective teachers. I will be following up with everyone I talked to over the next couple weeks.
However, the best thing about the conference is being able to interact with the leaders of institutions similar to us. I had a lot of time to talk with Randy Furushima, President of Hawaii Theological Seminary. Plans continue to go forward for us to put together a partnership that I am hoping will enable us to offer accredited seminary courses on Guam in the Fall of 2007. The seminars were also excellent. The picture is of David Barton who spoke last night after the evening meal. It was an excellent presentation on the overwhelming influence that evangelical Christianity had on the founding fathers and
documents of the USA. I also did not realize that evangelical African-Americans had such an influence on the American Revolution and early American government. But, I think I have had enough of the mainland now and am ready to come back home to Guam and to my lovely wife. (Pictured) I will be back on Sunday night (Guam time) after a marathon flight and I will be back in the office on Tuesday.
(Sorry no pics. My batteries were depleted.) Jim then drove me up to Schooley's Mountain to meet with the board of Liebenzell Mission USA (See web site at www.liebenzellusa.org). We had a productive couple of days sharing vision and strategy for the mission and PIBC. (Pictured here is board member Norm Dietsch and wife Hilda and Candidate secretary Mike Galley) Wednesday morning I headed to Nashville for the TRACS conference. I plan to post a report on that tomorrow. It has been a long month and I am ready to head back to the warmth of Guam.
I just returned from a speaking engagement at Shasta Bible College in Redding, California. Note the speaker's eye view of today's chapel in the picture! Again it was a real encouragement to see so many young people who are dedicated to the Lord and Christian service and interested in missions. Several talked to me afterward about short term, internship and student exchange possibilities at PIBC.
Greetings from Winston-Salem North Carolina. I have just returned from dropping off our Chuuk Campus Director Yosta Lodge, pictured here with Don and Melissa Howell who hosted us in Columbia South Carolina, at the Greensboro airport. Yosta will stop by Los Angeles to meet with people in the Chuukese community there and try to recruit new teachers and partners in churches and schools there. He will then meet with PIBC alumni in Hawaii on his way back to Chuuk.
spoke to about 25 interested students after I spoke in chapel. Several expressed interest in becoming Bible or English teachers at PIBC after their graduations. Please pray that interest will become action and reality. I will be spending the weekend following up on those interested at CIU and Dallas Seminary. I will also be meeting people at a new church in High Point, NC this Sunday.
Greetings from Columbia, South Carolina! I am here after a busy weekend. On Friday, Missy drove me up to Edmond, Oklahoma to visit with our former foster son, David Ahlgren. David runs a web business called Wave Services and has been donating his service to PIBC to run our web page and Distance Education pages. We had a great time of fellowship and (for me) learning a lot about how to use our distance education set up. We then went to Metropolitan Baptist Church where we met with several of the mission committee members and presented PIBC to them. PIBC has been approved there for designated giving and we are hoping to become part of their regular faith promise giving. We drove back to Dallas on Sunday evening where we met with the mission committe at Redeemer Bible Church and made another PIBC presentation. Joyce's sister Janet and her husband Paul Ramler are on the mission committee there. Then we got up early Monday morning and Paul took me to the airport to fly to Greensboro NC. I met our Chuuk Campus Director, Yosta Lodge in the Houston airport. We then met Annette Ladd in Greensboro, borrowed their car and drove to Columbia SC. This morning I was able to speak in the chapel at Columbia International University and speak with several of the students about opportunities to serve in Micronesia. I am very encouraged by their enthusiasm and responses. I am so thankful for God's provision through the wonderful hospitality of David Ahlgren, Janet and Paul Ramler and Don and Melissa Howell, our hosts in Columbia, and to the Ladds for the use of the trusty Rav4. I'll share a little more about Columbia tomorrow. I do appreciate your prayers.
Hello from Dallas Texas. I am a little cold - I don't even have a jacket - but doing well. I was very pleased about how things went in Hawaii. We continue to talk with Hawaii Theological Seminary about a possible partnership and significant progress has been made there. I was also encouraged to meet with leaders of several other Christian schools and institutes in Hawaii who are interested in a cooperation that I believe will benefit the students at all of our institutions.
reat!!! Keep coming back for more pictures as I get them.
One of our favorite things to do on Guam is welcome new missionaries. We got to do that last night as Ned, Marisol, Joel and Amelia Farnsworth arrived last night. Ned will work as an assistant dean, teacher and coordinator for children's ministries. As you can see from the picture several of our staff members and some students came out to the airport to welcome them. Between traveling through the islands, people coming and people going we spend a lot of time at the airport. We are thankful that the Farnsworths have arrived and we would ask for your prayers for their adjustment to life on Guam and that God would use them in a big way 
in the lives of our students. We will give them a few days to recover from the long (16-18 hours in the air) flight and then put them to work. We are excited that God is sending us so many good people here to help us in the work at PIBC. Please keep praying for our other personnel needs including ESL teachers and an IT person.
Six years ago Steve Stinnette and I, along with a small group of couples founded Guam Evangelical Church as a fellowship designed to reach out to people from the islands surrounding Guam. With our PIBC responsibilities growing we saw the need to back away from many of our leadership roles at the church. The leadership of the church also saw the need to focus the goals of the church more sharply. Thus, GEC was reborn as a student-led outreach ministry to the Micronesian students at the University of Guam. Instead of being a traditional church ministry, GEC's role will now be to work with other evangelical churches to reach and disciple college students and plug them into the churches working with us. With faculty and staff mentorship (especially from Steve), the UOG team (pictured here) held their practice service yesterday. They are busy building relationships with the UOG students who will be coming to their get-togethers. Please pray for the student team that they will be able to minister the love of Christ to the students they are working with.
