Semester Has Started!

The semester has officially started for me. Actually, the Chuuk campus started last week and the faculty and staff on Guam officially began last week with administration, faculty and staff meetings to prepare for the new semester. I will be teaching one course, mostly by distance education, Wisdom Literature. I will be teaching six 2 1/2 hour sessions on the Guam campus over the next two weeks and then re-teach the sessions in Palau (Feb. 9th-16th) and Yap (Feb. 17th-23rd). We have 25 students signed up so far - 12 from Guam, 8 from Yap and 5 from Palau. The students will interact in our online class chat room. Please pray that the Yap government will allow our students to use the local high school computer lab. These trips will also give me a good chance to interact with local church leaders, PIBC staff and alumni. Of course, it will be great to see Michael, Samantha and Titus again in Palau.
I will be heading to Chuuk this weekend for the dedication of the new Chuuk campus library. Because of the difficulty in getting materials it has taken more than two years to build it. The new library is an important step forward for the campus and takes care of a very important deficiency in maintaining our accreditation. Please pray for me as I meet with several of our staff for planning meetings there. A key issue is finding someone to run our Chuuk teaching facility when our present coordinator goes on furlough this summer.
Finally, Joyce and I celebrated her 49th birthday this past weekend. We had a nice dinner out on Saturday night and had friends over for dinner on Sunday. Don't worry. She is not slowing down. She will be helping the deans at PIBC this semester especially with driving students to ministries and other needs, taking two classes and putting in about 20 hours per week at the pre-school.