Congratulations Joe and Lisa!

Congratulations from the whole PIU family go out to Joe and Lisa Collins on his retirement from the Air Force. Joyce and I were privileged to attend the retirement ceremony at the Lutheran Church of Guam. Joe’s father presided over the ceremony. Lisa, our PIU librarian, is glad to have Joe home after a year away on duty and they are happy to be getting on with the next phase of their lives, which, I hope, will mean being part of PIU for a long time. They have been a real blessing to us here and are an important part of the great staff and faculty we have here at PIU.

The official documents are displayed

Then, all of us at the Owen house went over to the Collins’ for a celebration later that evening

Last Post on Our Christmas Vacation

We headed back to Guam on January 7th after a very relaxing three week vacation. We got to spend a lot of time just hanging around with relatives, the last few days with Matt, Kristin and Milo. Milo taught me how to play several games on his Wii and I almost got to the point where I could beat him at it. So here is the last post of pictures from our vacation…

Milo and I read our novels together. Joyce and Milo played with the pirate ship in the backyard

Matt and Kristin’s backyard is very nice, and with the warm San Diego temperatures, a lot of time was spent there. We also enjoyed making smoothies in the blender with the fresh oranges and lemons off their trees

We took Milo to Chuck E Cheese.

Joyce had some time to help Matt and Kristin put up baseboard inside their house.

This Week at PIU

This week was the 2nd week of our Spring semester at PIU. it has been a busy week as we are hosting the Kecklers and Rachelle Heverly at PIU and in our home, and are preparing for the Story Crafting Conference next week. This week we have been employing Sam, Maria and Rachelle in several tasks as they help us here at PIU. Maria has done two training sessions for our faculty. One was  at our faculty meeting Monday afternoon and another Thursday night at the Wood’s home (pictured). It is always great to get dinner cooked by Christel, our Academic VP, as part of our faculty training. Sam spoke in our student devotions Wednesday night and all three of them have been getting to know the students, doing some tutoring and checking out our beautiful island. The picture on the right was taken from Two Lovers’ Point.

The music team got our Tuesday chapel off to a good start. Tuesday’s chapel was our annual safety chapel where we talked about emergency procedures and plans. We were thankful that Ambrose Constantino again brought in his expertise as our guest speaker.

Friday’s chapel was our Ministry Chapel. Pastors and leaders of several island ministries came and shared their personnel needs in their churches or other ministries and then had a chance to recruit our students to fill those needs.

We then got together in small groups and prayed for each other, especially that God would direct each student into a ministry that fit them and would be an important part of their training at PIU.

 

After Friday’s chapel Mary Lou took us out for lunch at Jamaican Grill and we took a small tour to Hotel Row in Tumon and to Two Lovers Point

A Day at the Park in San Diego

Here are a few more pictures from our vacation taken during the first week of January. We were worried about the weather being cold in San Diego (well, compared to Guam) in January, but really we had no worries. Every day we were there was in the 70’s and even got up into the 80’s a couple days. I should have packed my shorts and swimming trunks! One of those beautiful days we spent at Balboa Park enjoying the museums and outdoor displays. Here are a few pictures from that beautiful day.

We spent the day with Matt, Milo and the neighbor girl Kylie. It is hard not to enjoy a day spent with a son and grandson.

The first place we went was the science and discovery museum – a “hands on” playing and learning place for kids. We enjoyed watching Milo enjoy himself immensely there.

Milo gravitated toward the musical instruments and loved driving the fire truck

 

We all enjoyed building things with the blocks.

I thought the Natural Science Museum was the most interesting. We were almost eaten by a prehistoric great white shark

Milo got to pet the skunk and sit in the mountain lion’s den.

We paused quite a while in front of the bird display. Too bad Missy wasn’t there. We all know how much she likes to have birds perch on her arm or head. :)

The Kecklers are Here

We were happy to welcome Sam and Maria Keckler and Rachelle Heverly to Guam last Saturday. Maria will be one of our featured speakers for our Story-Crafting Conference and Sam is doing some counseling with our guys and other speaking engagements. For more details on our Story Crafting conference you can check Mike and Samantha’s blog here and our piu web page here. Maria and Rachelle have already been working with our students and Maria has done two very helpful training seminars with our faculty. We have also been enjoying having them staying at our house.  We are looking forward to the conference next week. If you want to follow Sam and Maria’s adventures here on Guam she is blogging daily about her experiences here.

Christmas in San Diego

We have been pretty busy with the start of the semester and preparing for the Story Crafting Conference at PIU. I will post on that soon but Mike and Samantha already have here. But, I did promise to post a few pictures of our vacation time in San Diego with Matt, Kristin and Milo. So here is post 1 of 3. We had our 3rd Christmas celebration on the evening of December 30th. We had an interesting trip down with our flight delayed on the tarmac in San Francisco for 2 hours because of fog and then having the wrong address on the contract for the rental car drop off in San Diego (we drove from LAX to SD) But eventually we got there and had a nice relaxed celebration at Matt’s house. Milo was very happy to see his grandma. We talk to him on Skype quite often but there is nothing like seeing him in person. He wore his finest jewelry for the evening.

We all got to open a few presents. Matt enjoyed the Milo cereal we got on Guam, and Milo helped his mom open her present

The next night we did our traditional burning of the Christmas tree ritual. I suppose, for us, it signals the end of the Christmas season. Actually I fell asleep before midnight and missed this. 

Happy Birthday to Joyce

This last weekend we celebrated Joyce’s birthday – 3 times. I can’t say how old she is, but I will say that she cannot yet get the senior’s discount at the theater as I can. First we celebrated Saturday afternoon with Mike, Sam and the kids. Samantha made a cake and the kids helped her ice it. Then Joyce and I headed out to Lone Star for some Texas ribs and loaded sweet potato – her birthday choice. Lone Star was “out of ribs,” go figure, but her spicy chicken was pretty good and she did get her sweet potato. Then she headed over to Ross to spend some of her birthday money on some things she needed for the house.  She said she had a fun birthday.

 

 

She insisted on mowing the lawn. This is how she relaxes! At least it was a cool cloudy day.

The kids helped her blow out her candles

They helped her open presents and eat birthday cake too.

This is what Serenity does now when we tell her to smile