Joyce's Chauffeur License Test

Joyce took her test yesterday morning to get her license to drive the school vans. She thinks she passed the test, but we won't find out officially until December 3rd. She has been studying for the test for about a month. A couple nights ago she emailed me some examples from the study sheet that might illustrate why she had a hard time studying for the test. Joyce's comments are in red.

I am studying for my chauffeur’s license and take the written test tomorrow. It will be a miracle if I pass I think. Thought you might get a kick out of some of the study questions.

Definitely written by an ESL speaker and the spelling errors are on the study sheet.

5. No person shall drive vehicle when it so loaded or when there are in the front seat such a number of persons, in excess of three, cause obstruction the view of driverto the front side of vehicle as interfere of driver contraol. WHAT?????

13. Do not load at the rear of the truck it will cause frame bends and enough weight is taken from the front tires. O.K. I get this one

16. The tractor in direct line for the trailer with the fifth wheel opening line with trailer king pin. Come again?

20. Prevention of assuring its own stops smooth and gradual. They tell me if I just memorize these it will come in handy!

21. Stale lights means could change any time like when traffic light have been green sometimes before you reach. I’m not making this up this is really what it says. I am laughing as I write this.

22. Side mirrors must show enough to see rears 200 feet back. This is my personal favorite.

24. Danger zone of vehicle directly infront of the cehicle in which vehicle cannot stop. Spelled just like that.

25. it take thew average of ¾ of a second from the time a you see problem to the time of brakes. I’m sure hoping that when I see the test this will all make sense.

33. The combinations of a unit of truck tractor and pup trailer have different vharacteristics than the semi trailer like improvised trailer. Wish me luck and enjoy a good laugh

There are 40 questions on the test and I can miss eight.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from Joyce and Dave!








We had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration at PIBC today. Here are a few pictures of it...







As I read today in a cartoon... One day a year to give thanks for all God has given us is hardly adequate. Here Ned and I get ready to enjoy a little bit of it.











One of the great blessings for which I am thankful is a great missionary staff.


And some wonderful students.


Happy Thanksgiving

Fall Admin Council

My first order of business on returning to Guam was our Fall administrative council meeting. We normally have an admin council with our Guam administrators every Monday morning, but once a semester we bring up the administrators from all our sites for a meeting. So Monday-Wednesday we met. The picture here is from a committee meeting for the teaching facilities and included Yosta Lodge, Chuuk campus director, Noah Ruben, Chuuk remedial coordinator, Iotaka Choram, Chuuk TF coordinator, Jens Schulz, VP Finance and Operations and Rob Watt, Palau TF coordinator and me. And yes, we are sitting in the corner booth at King's Restaurant where we have a lot of our meetings. Also included in the meetings were Brad Boydston, Academic VP, Eric Sorenson, Seminary dean and Hollie Schaub, acting VP of human resources.

The two main issues discussed were the future use of our present Tol, Chuuk campus and the preparation for our reaffirmation of accreditation with TRACS (including the changes we need to make to add accreditation for our remedial programs, teachers education and other growth.) I will post more on these two issues later. I thought that it was a good and productive meeting even though I was struggling with jet lag. One of the greatest things about working at PIBC is that I am working with people who are focused on the kingdom of God, and who know how important it is to laugh fairly often.

Trip Stuff

I am back on Guam after a 32 day trip that took me from Guam to Honolulu, LA, Northern California, Nashville, Dallas, Columbia SC, Greensboro NC, back to LA, San Diego and back to Guam. I felt like this trip was the most productive of all the trips I have taken in the last few years. Normally we have 3-4 seriously interested people but this time we have more like 10-12. We have people that are interested to come out and help us in the following areas...
Teaching English as a 2nd language in Chuuk and Guam - 3-4
Helping us with making videos and other promotional material - 3
Long term Bible/theology teachers - 2-3 but several others that are pursuing it.
Short term Bible/theology teachers - many, everywhere I went, but we have at least one coming this summer
Short term mission trips - two church groups and other interested individuals
Development - We have made an agreement to work with a development consultant to raise private support for the work of PIBC. I figure that we need to raise about $500,000 in annual fund support and another $2-3 million in capital support over the next few years to do what we believe God is leading us to do.

In addition I met and talked with many interesting people, was encouraged by our faithful supporting churches and ministry partners and saw many instances of God working throughout the USA. Oh yea, it was also great to be able to visit with many of my family members too, including my cute grandkids! Still, it is great to be back at PIBC with the students and staff. (I do have a couple more trips to take in the islands before Christmas vacation.) I would appreciate your prayers for us as we end up our semester.

I am Back on Guam

I arrived back on Guam last night and, since I am up before dawn on Saturday, I have a little time to post to the blog and update you on what I have been up to lately. After Columbia SC, I flew back across the country to LA. I flew from Greensboro NC after Steve Stinnette and I had a chance to visit with Guam friend, Sonia Talato. Sonia reads the blog regularly, so I can say here - thanks Sonia for the hospitality. After the long flight we touched down in smoky LA. The smoke was so thick Saturday evening I could not even see the runway when we landed. The next morning when Michael, Titus and I went out to Starbucks (they drank healthy juice, I drank healthy coffee) ash was falling thick like snow and many people were walking around with masks or cloths over their mouths. The sun had an apocalyptic red color. The sky had pretty much returned to normal by Sunday afternoon. As you can see from the picture, I enjoyed some quality grandkid time on Sunday.

I will talk more about LA and what I did there in my next blog post. On Monday I drove down to San Diego to see Matt and Kristin and meet some people from San Diego Christian College and Southern California Seminary. When I was there Matt was teaching (pictured here) in a psychology class about Guam culture. He invited me to join him in teaching the class. Team teaching with Matt was a lot of fun and, of course, we are very proud of him as he is beginning his first year on the faculty there. We had a good time talking to the class about the island cultures and I had a good opportunity to make them aware of the needs and opportunities for teachers and counselors in Guam and Micronesia. That evening we went with the class to the Yokozuna restaurant (pictured below) in Chula Vista to introduce the class to Guam cuisine. It was fun to eat red rice and kelaguen in California.

I had a good opporunity to talk to several faculty/staff people there in San Diego. I also got to meet with our TRACS representative who will be coming out to Guam in May for our reaffirmation of accreditation visit. It was great to be able to introduce him to what we are doing at PIBC and help him get a glimpse at our vision for the school. I would appreciate your prayers as we are working on the self-study and other preparations for the visit.

My time in San Diego ended with breakfast with Matt and I headed back up to LA on Wednesday. I really enjoyed my time with Matt and Kristin and seeing what God is doing in their lives.

Spiritual Emphasis Days on Guam

Joyce sent me a couple pictures and a report on PIBC Spiritual Emphasis Days 2008. Every year the whole Guam campus goes camping for a week to get away and concentrate on spiritual/devotional issues and to have a little relaxation and fun. This year they camped up on Tarague Beach on the air force base. Joyce said everything went well - nobody got bitten by a snake this year! Tarague is one of the more beautiful places on Guam, and there are a lot of beautiful places on Guam! I know the students and teachers enjoy getting away from the books once in a while and many of the students make significant decisions for their lives at these retreats. As you can see Joyce is able to make friends with both students and the local wild animals - is she another St. Francis? Please keep our students, teachers and staff in your prayers as we all head for the finish of the semester in a few weeks. It is very warm in LA but I miss Joyce and PIBC and can't wait to get back. (In the meantime I am having some fun with the grandkids.)

South Carolina - Columbia International University

Travels continue... Yesterday I flew from Greensboro North Carolina through Newark to Los Angeles. After coming from Texas this week I met Steve Stinnette in Greensboro NC and we drove down to Columbia, South Carolina to meet students and faculty at Columbia International University. We were especially looking for faculty for our English (academic and "Bridge," remedial) programs on Guam and Chuuk. Of course we were also looking for faculty for our Bible/ministry programs too. We stayed with Don and Melissa Howell. Don is a faculty member at CIU and taught a course for us last summer on Guam and consulted with our board at the meeting in Palau. They always do a great job taking care of us.

We had the opportunity to meet with several classes at CIU and with several fauclty members in their offices. We are hoping to see several CIU faculty members in Micronesia teaching short term in the coming summers. In the English classes we presented the opportunity we have, especially in Chuuk, to help many young people raise their English level to be ready for college level study. Several students were interested and two met with us to talk about what they needed to do to come to Chuuk by next August. On Thursday evening Don and Melissa hosted a dinner for us to meet with seminary students about the opportunity to become faculty members at PIBC. We met with three couples, all of whom were quite interested in PIBC. We will be praying that God will lead them and continue to bring the right people to PIBC to fill our growing needs for faculty and staff. The picture is of Bill Schuitt (Liebenzell USA global director and chairman of the PIBC board) and I at the TRACS conference.

Back to Dallas Texas

After leaving Nashville, Saturday, I spent the last four days of this trip back in Dallas TX where we lived and went to Dallas Seminary back in 1988-92. I was there to recruit teachers and talk to the faculty about setting up mission trips and internships. I also was able to visit with PIBC alumni John and Lisa Tomada and a few other friends who have been out to PIBC - Brandon Buie and Jenny, and Joyce's sister Janet and her husband Paul. I was very encouraged this year by the opportunity I had to talk with several faculty members about what we are doing in the islands and how they could be involved. There seemed to be a lot of interest there. I also spent two days interviewing several students about the possibilities of being short or long term missionary teachers at PIBC. Please pray that God will direct these men and women to a great place of service (preferably PIBC)

While there I stayed with my daughter Missy. She is still working as a nanny and lives up in Allen. It was great to spend some father-daughter time with her and to get a chance to get to know her boyfriend, Cliff, a little. We also had fun watching some football together in the evenings. In the picture Missy and Cliff are showing their love for the Steelers and I am staying faithful to the 49ers even though they are 2-7 this year. Even her dog Sushi is a footbal fan. However, both of our teams lost this weekend.

Now I am at Columbia International University for the next couple days doing some more recruiting. One more week and I will be back on Guam.

TRACS Conference

Good evening from Nashville, Tennesee. This week I was attending the TRACS conference. TRACS is the accrediting agency for PIBC. I enjoyed the conference this year, especially the opportunity to network with other Christian college administrators. It is always encouraging to hear that other schools are going through similar things that we are and get some ideas about how they have dealt with these things. It was also good to have an opportunity to explore different ways that we could partner with some of these schools. There are several opportunities there. The first night we went on a river boat trip on the Cumberland River. I spent most of that trip talking with Dave Beck our TRACS representative setting up their accreditation reaffirmation visit for next May. I think it was a very profitable time. The lights of Nashville were also very pretty as we observed them from the river. I met our board chairman Bill Schuit (my roommate) and Steve Stinnette at the conference. We had a good time discussing several PIBC issues. While I thought the seminars this year were not as good as previous years, the networking opportunities made the conference worthwhile. The picture above was taken from the window of my hotel. It is not hard to figure out what the main denomination in Nashville is, is it?

Weekend in Scotts Valley

I have just arrived back in El Dorado, at my mom and dad's house, and will fly out to Nashville Tennessee tomorrow for the TRACS conference. I had been in Scotts Valley meeting with our friends at Gateway Bible Church and staying with my brother Doug and his family. I had a great visit with them as Doug and Diane took care of us Veeeery well.

On Friday and Monday I met with Jim Bartell and John McCabe to plan a Gateway project to help us renovate a house in Yap into a new PIBC Yap classroom, library, computer lab and office. Jim and John had a lot of good ideas about the project and brought a lot of enthusiasm into it. They are hoping to bring a small group of contractors out to Yap to work with local workers to get the job done in January-February. When we complete the project it will be a great benefit to PIBC and to the Yap church.

The main purpose of the trip was to speak at Gateway's service on Sunday. It was the first Sunday of "Missions Month" and I was honored to kick it off. They did a great job of raising awareness of the importance of each person in the church participating in missions, decorating the church and I was very encouraged by their obvious focus on the kingdom of God and extending it to the "ends of the earth." It was also fun to see so many old friends. Gateway has been supporting our mission work since we began in 1984 and we are very thankful for their faithfulness to us and to the mission. I was also encouraged by the enthusiasm of the Missionary Action Comittee (pictured left) as we discussed mission strategy over a delicious pizza after the service. Thank you pastors Dan and Fred for a great day. I am excited about what God is doing at Gateway!

I also had a chance to visit with old friends Jeff and Christy McKim. Jeff has been helping PIBC out with some grant writing and research so this was a good opportunity to touch base with Jeff on some fund raising opportunities. I spent Halloween with them at their house comparing grandchildren pictures and enjoying Christy's killer enchiladas.

If it wasn't so cold, it would have been a perfect weekend. I know the area needs rain, but why did it have to be so rainy (pouring) and cold when I was there? ;)