Week in Northern California

After Susanville Steve and I spoke in the chapel at Shasta Bible College. (Steve was supposed to take a picture of me too but he forgot so I only have the picture of him :) ) Steve's voice was shot but he made it through the presentation. He used candies and bottles of soft drinks to dramatize how most of the Christian workers in the world are working in the parts of the world that already have heard the Gospel. We then talked about how PIU is equipping missionaries to take the Gospel where it has not been preached. After the presentation I noticed that the Shasta students did not eat as many of the props as our students at PIU did. We also we were interviewed by Shasta Bible College President Dave Nicholas for his radio show. We appreciated the opportunity to talk about the school. We returned to the El Dorado County area that afternoon and watched a little Monday Night Football with my dad. During the next two days we had lunch with Phil Layton the pastor at Gold Country Baptist Church and dessert with Sarah Cain and her parents. Sarah is presently raising support to come out to PIU and help us with media and development. You can read about her ministry and support needs on her blog.

Wednesday was a driving and meeting day. We met Mike Brogna, the missions pastor of 1st Baptist Church of Stockton for breakfast and a discussion of possibilities for sending a mission team there. We then drove over to Foster City and met with Pastor Rob Hall of Central Peninsula Church. CPC is a supporting church of Eric and Karyn Sorenson. We are planning on having our PIU team stop there next summer and we are hoping that some of the CPC team will visit us on Guam in February. We finally made it over to Santa Cruz in the afternoon and met Jo Romaniello and Marci Martinelli at Peet's Coffee Shop. Jo and Marci will be coming over to Guam in January to teach counseling courses at the undergrad and seminary level and help us in our counseling center. We are excited to have them on that way. Later in the evening we stopped in at my brother Doug and his wife Diane's place for dinner and a place to rest. I had a good time watching the World Series with Doug and my niece Taylor. Thanks Doug for a place to crash.

The next morning we had breakfast with the Yap construction ministry team who will be coming out to Micronesia in January from Gateway Bible Church in Scotts Valley. Last year they made a lot of progress in renovating our Yap PIU classroom and will finish it this year. This year they plan to bring a few more guys. You can see from the picture how much more work needs to be done. We enjoyed lunch with Jeff McKim. Jeff has been helping us out with some grant researching. In afternoon I met a couple friends over in San Jose at Starbucks for coffee. Jack Welkley is an old friend from Scotts Valley Baptist days who was one of our 1st mission partners when we went out to Palau in 1984 and he has been a faithful partner ever since. We talked about some possibilities for him to come out and help us with finances some time in the future.

Finally we drove back to Sacramento where we picked up Amy, Steve's daughter at the airport and I dropped them off at their in-laws to spend a couple days. By the time I got back to El Dorado and my parents' place I was ready for bed. It was a busy two days but I was very encouraged at how God is putting PIU on the hearts of many people. We need a lot more people to partner with us and some to come out and help us, and I can see God raising up those people!