Palau Trip

I am settling back into my office work (next post will be about our progress on our accreditation reports) after returning from my 4 day trip to Palau  (pictures here are the view from my hotel window) last week. The main purpose of the trip was to teach four sessions of Old Testament History class. The class will meet for 8 two hour meetings this semester and then do the rest of the class by on-line discussion, quizzes and journals. I do the class sessions on the Guam campus and Palau teaching facility. (I was hoping we would have some students in our Chuuk TF too, but we did not have any sign up for the class.) I also met Steve Stinnette there and we met with several Palau Evangelical Church leaders and with some interested supporters of the school. I plan to go back in late March to finish the class and follow up with the contacts made on this trip. I am thankful for an enjoyable and productive time there. Here are a few pictures ....

The PIU classroom in the Koror Evangelical Church. We are in the process of developing this room into an office, classroom and library that can be used by both PIU and the church.

I didn't take a very good picture of the students. We have 5 in the Palau TF taking the course along with the 9 Guam students taking the class.  All of them work full time jobs and attend class in the evenings and Saturday. We did sessions on Thursday and Friday nights and then 2 sessions on Saturday.

We had dinner Thursday night with Hiob and Leah Ngirachemoi. Leah spoiled us with several different fish dishes including a big plate of sashimi. MMMMM!

After dinner the whole PIU gang posed for a picture. 

Friday we met Edward Ngiratrang for lunch. Edward was one of my students when I taught at Emmaus High School back in 1984-88. Ed is now the principal of the school and we had a great opportunity planning ways we can have our schools working together. I also had a good chance that morning to present PIU to the Emmaus seniors. It was also good to see Nino again. Nino is working for us in Palau now while we work to get his entry visa into Guam.

Sunday morning I had a chance to preach in both the English and Palauan service at the Koror Evangelical Church. These kids, some of whom were baptized during the service, performed some songs and recited several Bible verses.

Hiob is the pastor of the KEC. The last three years Hiob was the Dean of Men at PIU Guam. It was great to be able to spend time with him for a few days.