Rehearsal Dinner

After the rehearsal we all went over to Chili's Restaurant for the rehearsal dinner hosted by Cliff's mom and dad. It was great to be able to spend some time talking with my and Joyce's mom and dad and many other of our family members. It was so great that so many of them flew to Texas to be with us for Missy's special day. It was also great to get to know Cliff's family. Except for his mom, we had not met any of them before. We love Cliff and we enjoyed getting to know his dad and other family members too. Again another great event in a wonderful week.

Joyce and I wanted to buy Missy and Cliff an odd wedding present to remember the day. At the Micronesian island fair last week we found a coconut painted with the Guam "hafa adai" greeting and latte stones, but what it made it special was that it also had the Pittsburgh Steelers team emblem. Missy and Cliff are Steeler fanatics. We knew we had to get get it and you can judge by Missy and Cliff's reactions pictured here how much they liked it. They have to be the only couple in Texas with a Pittsburgh Steelers coconut.

Missy's flower girl was very serious about her wedding ceremony responsibilities. Here she is doing some intense study the night before to be ready for the big day. 

Wedding Rehearsal Thursday Night

Missy's wedding venue was the Double D Ranch in Mesquite Texas. It is actually a working horse ranch and is a beautiful spot with a lake, gazebo and reception hall. The wedding was to take place at the Gazebo right before sunset and the reception would take place at the Hall. The kids enjoyed looking at and playing with the farm animals before the rehearsal and before the actual wedding. Here is a very non-professional picture of the venue to the left. It was a great spot for a wedding. All three of my children had outside weddings and all three were beautiful. Here are a few pictures of the rehearsal.....

On the left Missy looks out at the lake with one of the flower girls. On the right Joyce, and Cliff's mom Suzanne pose before the rehearsal.

Cliff is either very excited about Paul's instruction or he is working on his golf swing.

Missy is very clear about what she wants in the ceremony.

Paul gathers the wedding party to go over the order of events. 

Missy's cousin Kevin escorts the two bridesmaids down the aisle

Missy and I wait for the moment for to make her bridal appearance

Now dad. me, escorts Missy to the altar. Teared up a little right here. 

Now I practice the line "her mother and I do" and the handing her over to Cliff. 

Paul explains the ceremony while Missy and Cliff discuss position and posture. 

Everyone enjoyed the rehearsal. Missy and Cliff had several good laughs as we practiced.

It appears here that someone gave the "everyone mill around" command at this point. I think we were getting ready to head to the rehearsal dinner. 

Wedding Preparation

This will be the first of a few wedding posts. My main job before the wedding was picking people up at the DFW airport. It was a lot of fun to pick up family members I hadn't seen in a while. Joyce spent the day of the wedding checking food, ironing and mending dresses and tuxes, picking up flowers and various other mother of the bride activities. In the picture on the left Joyce is getting a bridesmaid dress ready. Both of us tried to keep Missy from getting too nervous. Here are a few pictures of the day...

 Joyce helped Missy organize the wedding presents

I picked up my mom and dad, and Shelley the maid of honor.

Later we picked up Matt, Kristin and Milo at the airport. They stayed with us at Missy's house. Here Milo enjoys a little Milo. 

I enjoyed my time with Milo. Keeping him entertained was a fun responsibility. Here we are playing a little football. The kid has a great throwing arm.

On the Road in Texas

My second stop on this year's Fall trip is Dallas Texas. I met Joyce at DFW on Sunday afternoon, we got our rental car and headed to Missy's house. After a relaxing Sunday evening of watching Sunday Night football Joyce spent Monday helping Missy get ready for the wedding while I tried to get caught up on PIU business. We are in the process of getting our annual report in to our accreditor and get our new AA in Liberal Arts program going. I spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday at Dallas Seminary trying to recruit new teachers. I met several interested people and distributed a lot of PIU published materials. It was also good to see Mike and Libby Stroh and John and Lisa Tomada there. Thanks to Mikle for an excellent presentation at our PIU brown bag and to John and Lisa for setting up the display table - with candy even.

Joyce and Missy took care of cakes, pies and other food, flowers, dresses and tuxes, reception favors from sun up to sundown. she also took the picture here of Missy and Cliff getting their marriage license signed (above) and ready for Friday. Next post will have some wedding pictures.

On the Road in Colorado

I have been in the US Mainland for a week now on my annual Fall recruiting tour. My first stop was in Colorado. I stayed with Joe and Cathy Wise (left), parents of PIU staff person, Stephanie Wise. It was great to get to know them. I enjoyed the walks around their beautiful neighborhood at 7200 feet in elevation. I was breathing pretty hard walking up and down those mountain roads. Joe also makes a great cup of hot chocolate. On Saturday I went down into Englewood, Colorado to speak to a Palauan church group. The Palauans are beginning a new fellowship in the Denver area and about 200 Palauans came in from California, Oregon and Texas to celebrate and to get the new fellowship off to a good start. I enjoyed seeing several of my former Emmaus and PIU students there and had a good opportunity to recruit new students. In the picture on the right I am standing next to Jake Ngiraiblosch pastor of  the Palauan group and a former student from Emmaus days. It was a wonderful day and the BBQ was good too, of course. On Sunday I flew to Dallas...

I got to share in the evening service on Saturday with the group. Thanks to the whole group for a great evening!

I am in the US for my annual Fall recruiting and fund raising trip, with this year's added bonus of Missy's wedding (more on that in a later post). The day before I left I was able to attend the first day of the PIU annual Fall Spiritual Emphasis Days, now known as "Koinonia Squared" or K2. We take three days, dismiss all classes and close our office to focus on prayer, worship and seeking God's direction. This year's theme was "Sacrifice" with Luke 9.62 as the theme verse. Our guest speaker was Kenny Clark from Grace Evangelical Free Church in La Mirada CA. The first day was great and the feedback I am getting from the students and staff was that it was a very meaningful time for everyone. I am posting here a couple pictures I took on the first day and a couple others that I "borrowed" from students' Facebook pages...

 Our team "Gibborim" discusses personal application of Luke 9.62

All the teams work on their team building exercises.

At the pre-chapel we got to know Kenny and prayed for the retreat

Joannie shares with the group. After I took this picture of Joannie, Courage demanded that I take a close-up of her too.

K2, as most activities at PIU, involved the whole PIU family. Mike and Samantha and the whole family (well maybe not Titus here) enjoyed the retreat.

Other Things We Do On Guam

Most everyone who reads this blog knows that Joyce and I do teaching, ministry and administration at Pacific Islands University. I spend a lot of words here talking about the basic duties of those jobs. There are a few things we do (work and fun and lot of times both of those together) that I don't write about much so I thought I would talk about those activities a little bit today.

Occasionally we run errands for the school. Joyce does this one a little more often than I do. She made the bank run today. The school is a few miles away from the main downtown area so all of us occasionally make runs to do something. Saturday since we were downtown anyway we went to the Continental office to pay for tickets for our librarians to go to a conference to Chuuk. We took two of our students, Julie and Inca with us. We ended up waiting in line for about an hour to make the payment, but as you can see from the pictures the ladies' made good use of the time by posing for pictures.

We also occasionally get to meet up with old friends. Guam seems to be a cross-roads for travel and people we don't expect to see come through and give us a call. Last week we met up with Matt Garman. Matt was the youth leader at Yigo Baptist back in the mid-90's and had our Matt and Michael in his youth group. It was great to see him and get caught up on what had happened in the last 12-15 years. Matt, you look exactly the same as you did then!

Of course one of our favorite duties is babysitting the grand-kids. In fact we are doing it tonight. Having Mike and his family back on Guam this year has been great and it is really nice for me to have the kids around as an occasionally needed diversion from school business. Titus, Courage and I played a little tackle football in the living room and tonight while I was feeding Serenity, she gave me the big smile she usually only gives to Joyce. No matter what else has happened earlier that makes for a great day.

Tide Takes First Loss in the GCBL

Yesterday the PIU Tide took their 2-0 record into the contest with Abundant Life Church, hoping to stay undefeated , but instead received their first setback 48-44. PIU took an early 10 point lead and maintained it into the early part of the 2nd half. However the team came out a little flat in the 2nd half and the ALC team kept chipping away at the lead until they tied the score with about 2 minutes left. ALC took a brief lead at 42-40 with a minute left but Mike Ihpa re-tied the game with two clutch free throws. ALC scored the game winners on a break away layup and two free throws of their own. The second half was an exciting back and forth contest that kept us on the edge of our seats.

The half time show this week was particularly entertaining as Michael (Phil and Celia's grandson) and Titus put on a basketball skills demonstration. Courage ran around and showed us some very athletic moves but nobody is sure about what game she was playing.

Win or lose it is always fun to go to the games and hang around with the students and staff. You can see that we all have our game faces on. Next week PIU will try to get back on the winning track against Touchpoint at Noon at the Tamuning gym.

Annual Micronesian Island Fair

Joyce and I always make it a point to get down to the Micronesian Island Fair on Guam every year. It takes place every October and showcases arts and crafts, music, dance and, of course, food from each Micronesian state. So last Friday night we picked up Jake and Inca (students who are part of our discipleship group) and headed down to Ypao Beach for the fair. The picture here is of us posing in the re-created ancient Chamorro village. You never know what you will see down there but there is always something new and interesting. We always see old friends there too. The food is a bonus - this year I went for the BBQ chicken and pork on a stick. Joyce also was able to buy some cool things for Missy's wedding.

This year the new thing for us was to get up close with a monitor lizard. There was a guy there letting his pet lizard crawl around on the grassy area. So, as usual, Joyce wanted to get a closer look. Most of the time animals go to Joyce and leave me alone, but this lizard took a special interest in me. The handler thought that it was because the colors of my island shirt made the lizard think I was a tree and would provide some camouflage. Chili (that was the lizard's name) was certainly intent on getting himself up and on to my shirt. Those things have very sharp claws and I was surprised how strong they were. It had to be pried off of me. It was a bit of an odd feeling to have that thing crawling up my leg. We tried but we couldn't get Jake and Inca to let him climb on them.

Joyce also wanted me to take a picture of this guy with his very interesting walking stick. The stick is made out of hardwood but the vine that had grown into it gave it a very unique look. I wish we could have afforded to buy it. The Micronesian Island Fair is one of those things that makes Guam such an interesting and great place to live.