Owen Prayer Requests 4/30-5/6

We had an enjoyable prayer meeting last night. (See picture at left) Along with a lot of food we had a great time of fellowship, singing, prayer and a lot of laughs. We found out that PIBC was featured on the Comedy Central Show (without our knowledge) The Colbert Report. You can access the video from our web site at pibc.edu. We are not sure whether to feel amused, confused or abused, but mostly we are laughing and shaking our heads.
We are now down to our last two weeks of school so here are our prayer requests for this week....

1. The students at all sites are trying to get everything turned in and study for finals. Those that have procrastinated are beginning to pay the price. My distance ed students in Palau and Yap are behind because of some internet problems. Please pray that they can get everything done.
   
2. We have a lot to do to get ready for our summer furlough. I think I need to be in about 3 places at the same time. We also still have a few open spots in our schedule.
3. Michael and Samantha are planning to study at Talbot Seminary this coming Fall. Pray for their transition and that God would supply the funds.
   
4. We have some urgent personnel needs at PIBC for next semester including Bible teachers, English teachers and a maintenance man for our Chuuk campus. We also have several teachers raising support to come. Please pray that they will make it because we are counting on them.
   

We do appreciate your prayers.

Back From Chuuk Again

Thank you for praying for me this past week. I got back from Chuuk on Thursday night. The trip went well. I had a good opportunity to sit with most of our faculty and staff on Chuuk campus and teaching facility and explain the decisions of the recent board meeting and get their feedback on the best way to implement them. They had a lot of good ideas. I also had an opportunity to speak in the Chuuk campus chapel on Wednesday. We are trying to move people around to cover both of our Chuuk facilities (we have about 100 students between the two facilities) for next Fall. We will lose 5 faculty/administration members next year. I am trying to find one or two short term faculty members to help us cover the next semester in Chuuk. We also are in urgent need of a general maintenance man for the Chuuk campus. It seems like the flu bug running through all our sites is beginning to slow down. It's good because we are in the last three weeks of the semester. We have so much to do before Joyce leaves for the mainland on the 17th and I leave on the 23rd. Tonight we have PIBC prayer meeting at our house (with lots of food). We hope to see you this summer.

Owen Weekly Prayer Requests April 23-30

I will be heading down to Chuuk tomorrow with Mary Johnson, the PIBC academic VP and Jens Schulz, our finance guy, to meet with our Chuuk faculty and administration. We need to go over the board decisions and prepare for our reaffirmation of accreditation coming up within the next year. We have made some changes to our curriculum that will better (we hope) focus our students' practical ministry training and we need to talk about how to implement them. We will have some hard decisions to make so I do appreciate your prayers. I will be back on Thursday.
Here are a few other prayer requests... (and a picture of Joyce with her class)

1. Many of our students and staff are down with the flu/cold that we had/have. Please pray for quick recovery as some of the students are getting behind in their studies.
   
2. Pray for Happiness Lodge, the student that will accompany us on our mini-furlough. He has this cold and he needs to prepare for the trip, raise support and finish up his academic work for the semester. Also pray that God will use him in the lives of the people he will minister to.
   
3. We have a lot of loose ends to tie up before we go on furlough next month. Please pray for our wisdom in getting this stuff done.
   
4. We have many (too many) opportunities to minister. Please pray for our wisdom in knowing which ones to pursue.
5. Please pray that we can get our summer schedule together. Most of our churches are scheduled but we have a few more to go. We would love to see all of you this summer. Let us know if we can speak in your church service, mission meeting, Bible study, chapel etc - We'll even just meet you for ice cream to talk about what God is doing in Micronesia.

Many Blessings, Dave and Joyce

Our grandson Titus "eating" a mango

Student Life

This morning was music and praise chapel on the Guam campus. One of our Chuukese students shared about his recent trip to Manila to be with his father who was undergoing a serious medical procedure. He shared how he was so thankful for his family but also for his PIBC family and that when he was at a crisis point there he had called the PIBC dorm and asked for prayer. He felt that his father's recovery had a lot to do with those prayers and he was thankful for how the student body gathered around him. Another student shared that one of her relatives had just committed suicide and she was asking for support and prayer from her fellow students and the staff. It just reminded me that we are much more than an academic institution to our students. For example, the other day as Joyce and I were driving home we saw one of the school cars banged up on the side of the road. One of our Chuukese staff members was taking some students to the store and was involved in an accident (see picture). We were able to help them out and get the car towed back to school and insurance taken care of. Joyce went with one of the young ladies, who was slightly injured, to the clinic. So, in addition to being the teachers of our students, we get to be friends, parents, advisers and chauffeurs. We do appreciate your prayers for us and for our students as we grow together in the daily ups and downs of life

Psalm 128

We have had a bit of a long week this week. I picked up the same cold/flu/bug whatever it is, that Joyce has and was down Thursday and Friday. I was a little bit tempted to complain (I am not as tough as Joyce. She has been sick for a couple weeks without complaint). Then Psalm 128 came up this morning for my devotional reading. It made me realize how really blessed Joyce and I are. We have three kids making productive contributions to the world and we have even been blessed to live long enough to have the joy of being grandparents. We even have another 200 "kids" at PIBC that we are very proud of, in addition to many alumni who are serving the LORD. Though we have many problems and are far from "having it all together" God has really blessed us in our decision to serve Him in Micronesia. We are also blessed by those of you who pray for us and support our ministry. Sometimes it is just good in busy times to take a step back and look at how you are blessed. WOW!

Owen Weekly Prayer Requests

Here are a few prayer requests, a picture of our new road (back road to Andersen that we drive every day from home to PIBC) and a picture of Titus taken from Michael and Samantha's prayer letter. We have about 5 weeks to go in the semester. After graduation we will be headed to our short furlough on the mainland. We hope to see as many of our state-side family and friends as possible. Please pray for...

1. Joyce. We are still trying to figure out what bug is bothering her. The docs think she has an infection of some kind but they just don't know. It could be that her lupus is acting up too. She is happy to be mobile and working but would prefer to be operating at 100%.
   
2. Dave. Dave is back home for a few weeks after several weeks of travel and meetings. We will be working hard over the next few weeks to implement the board decisions including some reorganization, curriculum revision and trying to get the new seminary program ready to go.
   
3. Hawaii partnership. We have begun a partnership with Hawaii Theological Seminary and are looking into working with other schools there. We need wisdom getting this thing going.
4. Future for Michael and Samantha. They are still trying to decide if they should go to seminary this Fall or work a year.
5. PIBC Students. That they will have a good finish to the semester and that the students will be able to raise the money they need for their mission trips to Thailand and to the Marshall Islands.
   

We appreciate your prayers and always enjoy hearing from you!

PIBC Days Pictures

PIBC Guam held its annual PIBC Days March 31 to April 2nd. It is a celebration of the founding of the school. We celebrate with games, competitions and services. The entire campus is divided into three teams named with biblical terms. Last year I was on the "Hesed" team, this year my team was called skopos. Each team, besides being in competition, is responsible for a
service.

Back From Chuuk

It has been a while since my last post. Since then we have completed our PIBC annual board meeting, enjoyed PIBC days on the Guam campus and I have just returned from a pastor's conference and the 100 year celebration of the gospel's entrance into Chuuk. The conference lasted four days and, besides me, the speakers were Harald Gorges the Liebenzell Area Director, Steve Bradley a retired missionary who is teaching at PIBC Chuuk as a volunteer, and PIBC Chuuk teacher and Liebenzell missionary Siegbert Betz. Other guests included Roland Rauchholz, the 1st president of PIBC and Lothar Kaessar who was one of the translators of the Chuukese Bible. Roland showed a slide show documenting the history of the work in Chuuk.
I was able to spend an afternoon with the Chuukese pastors in a discussion about PIBC. It was good to talk about what our alumni are doing. It reminded us that God has been faithful already to work in the lives of our graduates. We also had a good time of planning for the future. I was pleased to see the commitment of the Chuuk church to their support and responsibility for the school. (In the picture PIBC Chuuk Campus Director, Yosta Lodge is translating my presentation into Chuukese.)
I will write more about the board meeting and PIBC Days in future posts.