Last Week Revisited

I am not sure last week was a typical week for a PIU missionary on Guam but here it is (was).

Monday: If it is Monday it must be administrative meeting. We have our admin meeting every Monday morning at 10 AM. It includes Melody Plaxton - Academic, Rob Watt - Student Life, Harumi Eliason - Finance, Lisa Collins - Library, Steve Stinnette - Advancement, Eric Sorenson - Seminary and Cristel Boedecker, who does a great job on the minutes. This is our time for taking care of issues that effect the school, planning and communicating across departments. We also have a good time of fellowship. This week one of our big issues is the TRACS (our accrediting agency) annual report. We are working on getting it finished up this week. It is a big job but it gives us a good snapshot of what the school looks like. Monday afternoon I spent working on the operations report. On Monday evening Joyce has class so I do my exercise routine and then prepare a quiz for my seminary class.

Tuesday: We had an executive committee of the board meeting at 8 AM. With one board member in Germany, one in New Jersey and one on Guam it is always tough to get the timing right. We do the meetings by Skype. The main subject of the meeting was looking at the 2009-10 school year budget. We make a tentative budget in March at the annual board meeting and then we need to adjust it in September when we see how many students we will have. It was a good meeting. We got the budget ready for board approval and the internet only went down one time during the meeting. Tuesday afternoon we had a planning meeting for our summer 2010 ministry team. It was raining so hard we decided to stay home on Tuesday night - Joyce had homework.Tuesday chapel was in between the meetings. I was looking forward to hearing the message but got pulled out of chapel for a minor financial crisis (we solved it).

Wednesday: Worked some more on the operational report. We had another planning meeting for developing our curriculum for our Certificate in Basic English program. We want to make it more practical for our students who will be entering this program. Some will be using it for gaining the English proficiency for college entrance while others will use the program to improve their English for working in the hotel and tourist industry or in the expected construction boom. We are hoping to work together with other Guam community service organizations on this project. Wednesday evening was my seminary NT Survey class. This is my favorite part of the week. Our discussion was on Jesus, the NT and the Old Testament law. How do they fit together? We had some good discussion about how the NT writers use the Old Testament.

Thursday: Thursday morning was class prep and a little more work on some other office and planning issues. I have had a tooth ache for the last couple weeks so I had a dentist appointment in the afternoon. The dentist said the tooth was cracked and he had some good news and bad news. Don't you hate it when they say that? Anyway the good news was that the crack did not go all the way down and the tooth was savable. The bad news was that there was decay there so I would need a root canal. After all that I drove home unable to feel any part of my lips, tongue or right side of my face. PIU had a basketball game that night so I went to the game in that condition. It is hard to cheer when you can't feel your face. It was a close game but we lost.

Friday: Friday morning chapel was a music chapel in which Bill Wood exegeted a couple songs and we sang them together. I always enjoy Bill's chapels and would say that they are always unique. I spent Friday afternoon doing some student counseling.

Saturday: Class again! Yeah! Today we covered Philemon, the pastoral epistles, James and 1st Peter.Whoo. We flew through them. Saturday afternoon I did some class prep and then took a nap. Joyce and I did get to go out and enjoy an evening together on Saturday night.

That was my week. I am not sure it is typical, but we do keep pretty busy. I'd rather be in the classroom than the office, but the high quality, good people I get to work with make my work week very enjoyable.