VOM Ministry in Dallas Texas, July 11

Saturday night we drive up to Dallas from Corsicana. We were performing at Redeemer Bible Church in Dallas and they hosted the team Saturday and Sunday nights. Joyce's sister Janet and her husband Paul attend there and arranged for us to minister there. We sang for the youth group (Jr High through college) during the Sunday School hour and then sang one song during the regular worship service. We had lunch and watched the world cup at the youth center in the afternoon. We are excited about the partnership between Redeemer and PIU and I plan to come back there in October to talk more about it.

 The students enjoyed the youth center. We did a half hour performance there

The temperature was over 100 degrees so the giant slip and slide was pretty popular with all the young people

Jake enjoyed the barbeque and fellowship time

Monday morning we were dressed and ready to go before we even had time to have our morning coffee

VOM Ministry in Corsicana Texas, July 10

Joyce and I are still in Santa Cruz. We will be going to my high school reunion tomorrow and have been able to spend a little time with my brother and his family. We enjoyed a walk on West Cliff Drive and spending an afternoon with our friends Jeff and Christy McKim yesterday. We will be heading back to Redding after the reuinon tomorrow to speak at 1st Baptist Redding on Sunday.

Here are a few pictures from our VOM concert in Corsicana Texas a couple weeks ago.

Corsicana has a very large Micronesian community. Pretty much everyone who attended this concert were Chuukese or Palauan

The Palauan ladies prepared a large feast for us.

Erten appears to be enjoying the food and fellowship

The Palauan students enjoyed meeting up with friends and relatives

There was even a small reunion of Bethania High School graduates

VOM Ministry in Salado Texas, July 6-9

After our long trip to New Mexico we did another long haul from Alamogordo to Salado, Texas. However, after the drive, we were able to settle in there for four days at Grace Baptist Church. We did concerts on Wednesday and Thursday night, along with a kids' program on Thursday morning. We had a good audience out for each performance, including people (many of the students' relatives) from the Chuukese and Palauan communities in Central Texas. We are very thankful to Grace Baptist for the use of their church van and trailer. We missed that van when we had to give it back and move all our stuff into a U-Haul. Grace Baptist has been a great partner with PIU the past few years in ministry to Micronesians and it was great to get to know the people a little better. We are hoping to see some students from that area of Texas at PIU in a couple years.

It was good to meet up with Daisy, our Dean of women, again. 

The VOM team greets the audience

Keiny gets to know a new friend

The kids' ministry day went very well

The kids all wanted to pose with the VOM team for a group picture. One little girl said that the program was "the best day of her life!"

Learning the worship dance was a very popular event everywhere we went

As usual, Joyce supervised the PIU display and table

It was great to see Aaron, Hollie and Sam Schaub again. They drove all the way from Corpus Cristi to see the concert. 

The students also got to see many relatives in Texas.

Thank you friends at Grace Baptist for taking such good care of us!

Some Traveling Pictures from July 5-6

Joyce and I had a good time yesterday evening with Scotts Valley/Santa Cruz team that came out to Yap for a short term mission trip to build our facility for the PIU Yap teaching facility. We enjoyed some good food and fellowship and made plans for the group to return to Micronesia. The plan for now is to have the group work on developing the Guam campus (more on the plans in a later post) and have them come out some time next Spring. I was very encouraged by their enthusiasm for being part of what God is doing at PIU and in Micronesia. I am also posting here some pictures from the VOM tour. After the 4th of July weekend we headed toward Texas. On Monday the 5th we drove from San Diego to Alamogordo New Mexico. I am sure it was the longest drive any of our students had ever taken. Here are some pictures of that day and loooooong night...

Joyce and I alternated driving the van pulling our trailer. We saw a lot of cactus as we drove out Interstates 8 and 10. 

I thought this rock formation was interesting

About midnight, when we were almost to Alamogordo we went through a border patrol inspection station. Several of the students had placed their passports in their luggage in the trailer so we had to find them so we could proceed.

We ended up having to wait 2 1/2 hours because we had some of the girls' passports in our van and they had some of the guys' passports in their van. The blue van was about 2 hours behind us. The border patrol officers were nice to us, but it was still a long wait so late at night with another long drive to Texas ahead of us the next day.

A Day with our Friend Dan Fields

After the sports festival we headed up the road a little to spend the rest of the 4th with our friend Dan Fields. Dan  came out to Guam last Fall to take the pictures for our publications and has helped PIU out in several other ways. We enjoyed a great day spending time with Dan and his family. We ended the day by watching the fireworks from his back yard. BBQ, swimming, fireworks and chilling out with good friends was a great way to spend the 4th.

I think everyone was a little tired from the previous weekend's ministry. We had plenty of opportunity for napping.

As usual, no matter how cold it was, Kita was the first one into the pool

Despite the beautiful, panoramic vista around him, Erten was intent on texting

We also got to see our good buddy Matt Augee at Dan's house. We were very sorry to not be able to perform at Matt's surf camp because of a medical issue, but we are glad that Matt is recovering and we continue to pray for him.

VOM Ministry at the MOMUSA Sports Festival July 2-4

Joyce and I are in Scotts Valley/Santa Cruz staying at my brother's house right now. Matt, Kristin and Milo are with us until tomorrow and we are enjoying spending some time with them. We will be meeting this week with some potential short term missionaries here and then we will go to my high school reunion on Saturday before we head back to Redding to speak at the 1st Baptist Church there on Saturday. In the meantime my goal is to get caught up with my posts and fully report on the VOM trip by the end of July. So here are some pictures and comments about the VOM ministry at the MOMUSA festival at Point Loma University in San Diego over the 4th of July weekend.

The Micronesian Outreach Ministries USA festival is a pretty big annual event. Groups came from Pohnpei, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, Arizona and all over California to attend the 3 day sports-worship-evangelistic event.

The basketball tournament is a big part of the event. PIU won one game and lost two in the tournament

The girls participated in the volleyball tournament. They didn't bring shoes so they had to borrow some to play.

Justin hits a free throw to keep us in the game.

Joyce and Milo took care of the PIU display.

I met quite a few of our alumni. Here I am posing with Alter Balualay

The VOM team ministered in the Saturday night program.

Keiny gave a great challenge to "stand for God" within the activities of daily life. We really enjoyed the conference. I am hoping that PIU can participate in future MOMUSA conferences as one of the sponsors.

San Diego County Fair

While we were in San Diego the VOM team was given free tickets to the San Diego County Fair. We thought it would be a great cultural experience for our students, and it would be fun too. So we loaded up the vans (we took Milo too) and enjoyed a day at the fair.

Milo and I had our baseball caps on and we were ready to go

The deal was that we could have free tickets if we came in and sang at the visitor's center. So the first thing we did was go in and put on a small concert for them. I think they enjoyed it and we got a good round of applause from all the onlookers

Milo enjoyed the animals and the farm displays

Jayleen and Meyou pose with their Australian cuisine

Maymay and Meyou rest their tired feet after a long day of walking

Milo found a better way to get some rest as Meluat stands guard

We are ready to head back to our host homes after a long, fun day at the fair