Trip to Pohnpei

This is the time of year for my annual recruiting/conference trip to the US mainland. This year I had been invited to visit Pohnpei by the Pohnpei Church of Christ leadership, so I stopped there for a couple days on my way to the US. This year we have the most Pohnpeian students (7) attending PIU that we have ever had and we are hoping to see more students from Pohnpei at PIU. I had an opportunity to address the students, staff and faculty at Ohwa Christian School (where PIU graduate Saladier Ilai is part of the administration), give the PIU entrance exam there, meet with school and church leaders and meet with a wider group of church leaders at an Isles of the Sea Bible translation training conference. It is exciting to see God opening up new areas for PIU to minister. It also makes my goal to recruit new faculty, staff and administration for PIU much more urgent.

I gave the PIU entrance exam to 15 students at Ohwa Christian School. Later PIU faculty Ken Dixon gave the test to five more potential students.

Ohwa hosted a dinner reception for me that evening. I got an opportunity to talk about PIU and encourage the students that a Christian college education is possible for them. I also had the opportunity to meet with faculty, staff and administration at Ohwa (right).

The freshmen girls at Ohwa sang a song of welcome to me. The food was amazing.

The next day I had an opportunity to give the devotional and teach a session on how to do effective Bible study to a group of Pohnpeian pastors. The conference was organized by PIU profs, and Isles of the Sea missionaries, Ken Dixon and Peter Knapp. I enjoyed meeting the pastors from the UCCP group, PMF, and other churches. They seemed to be very excited about developing a relationship with PIU.

Ministry Equipping Conference #2

The theme of the 3rd Annual PIU Ministry Equipping Conference, held October 18-20, was “Shaping God’s People Using God’s Stories.” The keynote speaker was Dr. Kent Edwards from Talbot Seminary. This is the 2nd time Kent has been our speaker. Sessions were held Thursday and Friday evenings and all day Saturday in the PIU classroom. In the three days Kent took us through the whole process of teaching Bible stories, from reading and interpreting the biblical narrative to preaching it in a way that is exciting, true to the text and changes lives. Kent made the point that if we believe in inerrancy, and we do, then the forms and genre of scripture are also inspired. If that is the case, we need to not only interpret the genre correctly, but preach it in an appropriate way too.

We also had some time to interact with one another and some good music

Participants were encouraged to share their own stories (left). Alan Miller (right), also a guest speaker from Talbot, led some of the breakout sessions.

This year’s conference had the highest attendance of any we have done. We enjoyed the participation of several churches and ministries. We are thankful for the many individuals and businesses that contributed to the costs of conference and provided the excellent food. On the right Kent poses with former Guam governor Felix Camacho.

PIU Participates in the Guam “Shake Out”

On October 18th and 10.18 AM the alarms rang out and PIU participated in the Guam “ShakeOut.” This was a Guam-wide earthquake drill to test our readiness for the big one. The alarm rang to simulate the earthquake (the “big one”) and we all took cover. A second alarm rang to announce the “all clear” and everyone took refuge on the basketball court. After everyone was accounted for we headed back to classrooms, dorms and offices. The drill was a good reminder of our need to be ready for whatever happens.

Ministry Equipping Conference #1

Last week we enjoyed the 3rd annual PIU Ministry Equipping Conference (formerly called the PIU Preaching Conference). Our speakers were Dr. Kent Edwards and Alan Miller from Talbot Theological Seminary. We picked them up at the airport on Wednesday afternoon and the conference started Thursday night and ended Saturday afternoon. Joyce and I enjoyed hosting the speakers in our home. I think this may have been the best conference we have put on. Samantha and the Advancement Team did a great job on the logistics so that we could have the conference on campus this year. I will follow up with a post with some pictures of the conference sessions. Here are a few of the welcome and first night on Guam. 

We took them to Chamorro Village on Wednesday night. Of course we made Alan ride the carabao.

The “plan”for the conference.

International Day at PIU

Last Monday the PIU Student Council sponsored an International Day. The idea was that each different cultural group would explain the unique aspects of their home culture, showcase the art, dance, music and/or, of course food, of their home “island.” The purposes were to understand each other a bit better and celebrate the differences within the unity of the PIU family. It was fun to see how talented the new students are. It was an enjoyable evening that began a very busy week. Here are several pictures of the event.

Celia prepared some Chamorro food (left) and the Yapese brought their own local food

Pohnpei and Chuuk were well represented

I enjoyed the displays and food from Kosrae and Palau

The Yap team were in local dress

And did some chanting and dancing

Kosrae (left) and Palau showed off their cultures

The Pohnpeians demonstrated the correct way to offer sakau and did some chanting and dancing

There were lots of smiles from the spectators. All in all, it was a great experience of Christian unity in diversity

Preaching at RCF

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to preach at the Ranch Christian Fellowship in Yigo. Most of the leadership and many of the participants are PIU students or graduates. So Joyce and I headed up there in the afternoon to the service. The Ranch is a unique fellowship where most, if not all, the people are under the age of 25. The music is not professionally prepared but it just wells up from the hearts of the young people and sounds amazing. There is not a lot of concern about time. We started when we started, there are  no clocks in the building and no one seemed to be concerned about how long I preached. I spoke on the story of Esther. I tried to encourage them from the point of the story that God is in control, even when nobody recognizes that He is there, and can save His people, even when they don’t know that they are in danger, even through people who are not faithful to Him. Joyce took the pictures here of Jesse and I.

Some Recent PIU Chapels

Here are a few pictures from some recent PIU chapels. We enjoy some excellent speakers, including faculty members, such as Bible professor  Hartmut Scherer (pictured here on the left) and from the community (below). We also enjoy excellent music from both staff and students. The student choir is pictured here on the right.

 

PIU librarian, Lisa Collins, uses her megaphone to introduce last Friday’s speaker Tammy Jo Taft.

Spiritual formation students lead worship by reading and explaining Psalm 103.

Day of Prayer

  A couple weeks ago I posted our Day of Prayer prayer requests. I thought I should post a couple pictures of the Day of Prayer itself. We had organized times of group prayer at 7AM, 11AM and 6PM and other informal prayer times. We do appreciate you praying with us. We, and the students, are in a very real spiritual battle and prayer is an important weapon in that battle.

Prayer chapel began with a nice acoustic set of worship music. On the right is one of the groups of students that prayed for me directly.