Weekend Stuff

Voting on Guam

Primary elections were held Saturday on Guam for governor, the legislature and a few other positions. Election season here is really an experience/party. For the last month there have been brightly colored election signs everywhere, this year with very nice pictures of the candidates. There is also a lot of "waving." Big groups of a candidates' supporters stand on a street corner with signs and wave at the passers by. On election day we had to wade through huge groups of supporters of each candidate barbequeing, passing out candy etc to get to the polling place to vote. It is a lot of fun and most of the time seemed pretty friendly. We will see how things go in the regular election in a couple months.

Goodbye Party for the Troxells

At our Sunday night prayer meeting we had a goodbye party for Charlie and Jan Troxell. They are retiring after 7 years at PIBC and moving to Saint Louis. Charlie has been our Director of Communication for that whole time in addition to he and Jan serving as deans of men and women for several years. We will really miss them but we wish them God's best as they go.

Everyone seemed pretty tired at the meeting after an eventful first week of school. However, there was a lot of praise and thanksgiving for the new staff and students and for the way God again produced some kind of order out of the usual 1st week chaos. For example we did not have beds for many of the dorm rooms until Joyce found out that the Hilton was remodeling several of their rooms and selling all the furniture. We were able to get 20 complete bed sets for only $400 and also several $5 desks, tables and lamps. It was a sweaty job hauling all that furniture back to the campus and we looked like the "Beverly Hillbillies" with mattresses and furniture tied all over our cars and trucks, but God supplied our needs.

We are also encouraged by how excited the students are about doing ministry. Some of them were asking if they had to limit themselves to one ministry since they were interested in four or five. This is also when homesickness sets in for the new students and staff. All of the students seem to be experiencing the usual first week syllabus shock too. We appreciate your prayers for us. It has been a great first week and we are looking forward to a good second one.

I have to admit I did a lot of my class prep work this weekend in front of the TV with the start of college football season. We have live ESPN and ESPN2. We also get some live games on the local channels from the military satellites. We get Monday night football live on Tuesday at lunch time. Some of the staff are planning a get together for lunch Tuesday to watch the Miami-Florida St. game. Should be a good game.