Merry Christmas from The Owen’s

Merry Christmas 2012. We just returned from the Christmas Eve Service at the Lutheran Church of Guam, where we had a good time meditating on the incarnation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I was thinking that we have a tendency to make Jesus over into an image that fits what we like him to be instead of what he really is. The identity of the real Jesus is quite clear in the angelic announcement in Luke 2.11, “The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!”

• He is the Savior who has come into the world to make things right. He would pay for sin at the cross and defeat it in his resurrection, ascension and return. He fixes what is wrong with the world as he “raises the lowly” and judges the oppressor. He heals His people and brings peace.
• He is the Messiah, King who will fulfill the promise to crush the head of evil and “rule the world in truth and grace.” Even now he rules from the right hand of the Father and waits the day when the “kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of God and of His Christ.”
• He is the LORD, God come in the flesh. Everything that makes us human was assumed and redeemed by the 2nd person of the Trinity and God entered into our world and into our lives. God is truly a God of love and relationship. This is what we celebrate at Christmas.

So let us be merry and announce the Gospel with our words and with our lives. The real Gospel: Jesus Christ is LORD!!

Cantate Christmas Concert

Recently Joyce and I decided that we needed to do something fun together as a couple,so we (she actually) decided we would join Cantate Guam, a community choral organization, for the Christmas season and performance of the Messiah in January. So we started at the beginning of December and had our first concert with the group last night. We did three Christmas songs with the Guam Territorial Band at St. Jude’s Church and we will perform again on Saturday night for the “Lessons and Carols” concert at the St. John’s Episcopal Church. I have really enjoyed getting back into singing in a choir and getting to meet a lot of great people. I have even been enjoying the practices, though I need to get my voice back into shape. Last night was fun, even when the PIU students tried to distract me from the audience while I was singing. If you are on Guam come out and see us on Saturday night.

PIU 2nd Annual Bible Run Coming January 5th

January 5^th, 2013 is the second Bible Run Around the Island presented by Pacific Islands University.  Participants join in by relaying 2 copies of the Bible along routes that cover the perimeter of Guam.  Everyone who supports this endeavor is encouraged to pray for the island of Guam, especially the village they are passing through, the people and leadership of the island.  We seek to proclaim that Christ is Lord and join as many people and churches as we can across the island.  This is a tremendous opportunity to help us make an impact on the island for Christ and to raise awareness on island about what is available at PIU. Please see the PIU website (www.piu.edu) for more information on how to support the Bible Run whether or not you are on the island of Guam.

We are looking for people to be either mile supporters, major program supporters or runners to participate in the event. The relay run will cover 73 miles around the perimeter of the island. We are trying to get a $100 mile supporter for each mile of the route from on-island and off-island. Each mile supporter can designate as many runners as they want to run in their group. I am sponsoring mile #14 on the Northern route. Joyce and I are asking our family members, off-island friends and mission supporters to sign up as runners on my mile (suggested donation $5-25 and you get a T-Shirt) and symbolically run/walk a mile wherever you are on January 5. (Milo and I did this last year when I was in San Diego). During your run we would ask that you spend the time praying for PIU and the kingdom work in Guam and Micronesia. You can sign up and pay registration right here: http://www.piu.edu/2013-bible-run-for-off-islanders/ if you would like to be part of this. Of course you can also sign up to be a mile supporter or to be one of the major supporters of the event at the link above.

If you do this, I would also love to get a picture of you running your mile so that I can post it on my blog (only with your permission of course) so we can all enjoy it together.

Thank you very much for praying for us and the support you are to us, Mike and Samantha and the kids, and this students and staff at PIU.

Cute Christmas Pictures 2

Continuing from the last post – since I had too many pictures for one post. The night before Mike, Sam and the kids left for California (they are safely in So Cal now) we had a little family Christmas celebration at our house. Here area few pictures from that.

They enjoyed the funny Christmas hats and were quite happy with the rolling travel bags we got for them. Hello Kitty and Dora the Explorer were for the Courage and Serenity and Titus got an Avengers bag.

Each grandchild also received a Christmas shirt to wear on the plane. Here Serenity tries hers on.

Then I helped Serenity pack her stuff

Serenity and Courage distributed presents to grandma and grandpa

The next morning, before sunrise, we took the kids to the airport to catch their flight. This picture was taken in front of the airport Christmas display

Christmas With the Kids

Since Mike, Sam and the kids will not be here for Christmas (they left yesterday and are now in California) and we will be staying on island this year, we will be having our first Christmas in several years without any family around. We will stay quite busy with several activities but, yea, it won’t be as fun. Nevertheless we did get to have a family Christmas this past week with the kids. We took Titus, Courage and Serenity out to see the lights on Sunday night and then had a family Christmas time on Wednesday night to open presents before they left. Here are a few pictures of our adventures. (I could not resist posting the picture here of Courage as the Christmas Pirate/Fairy Princess)

The first place we went Sunday was the Micronesia Mall to ride the Christmas Train.Titus got to ring the bell in the engine on the 2nd ride.

After some pizza and frozen yogurt we headed down to Tumon to see the Christmas lights

More Christmas lights

Santa wasn’t there so the kids sat in his chair

They also enjoyed the displays. They actually became part of the displays

They got to be up close to everything

Again, part of the display…

We then went over to the Hilton to look at the model trains

Then it was time to say “Good night” to Frosty and head home

FSM Day of Prayer

Last Saturday I was privileged to be one of the speakers for the Federated States of Micronesia Day of Prayer sponsored by the President of FSM, Emanuel Mori. It was quite a large gathering of Micronesians and friends of FSM that took place at the Astumbo gymnasium on Guam. There were several speakers including President Mori, Dr. Robert Underwood from the University of Guam, Guam legislators and PIU faculty member Iotaka Choram. There was also a singing contest in which several choirs and groups from all over Micronesia participated. The theme of the Day of Prayer was “Loving God will all your heart, soul, mind and strength,  and loving your neighbor as yourself.” I had a good opportunity to present a biblical view of the mission of leadership under God. I also had a good time seeing many old friends from all over Micronesia and meeting many new friends.

This was my view from the stage (left) as I prepared to address the group. President Mori (right) gave an excellent speech about the need for biblical values in leadership. I had a nice opportunity to chat with him at lunch the day before the meeting and I was impressed with the depth of faith he expressed to me and his desire to serve the islands as a leader under God.

End of Semester at PIU

The Fall 2012 semester at PIU has almost come to an end, yes already! The last day of the semester is Friday the 14th. With the end of the semester comes final exams, projects and papers and that was true for Mike’s history classes and my Theological Research class. I got to be one of the judges of the final projects for Mike’s classes (left). The projects involved an elaborate model of a historic place and a cake depicting a historic personage with a group presentation explaining the model and the cake. My class was team taught by Jim Sawyer, Lisa Collins, Bill Wood, Mike and I in which the students were guided in writing papers in the areas of exegesis, systematic theology, historical theology and a summative paper. The summative papers were presented in the final class meeting at my house over a nice dinner (Right).

 

On the left Mary Lou explains the significance of the All Saints Church at Wittenberg and the cake which depicted Luther’s 95 Theses. On the right Rommel presents his research paper explaining “The Nature of Worship” as his wife Joy listens.

Ransome and Mike tell us about the subject of their cake, Cleopatra. On the right another group put together a model of Herod’s Temple.

On the left is a model of Solomonic Jerusalem. That group also made a tasty ziggurat out of orange cake. My favorite was the model of Constantinople (right) made entirely out of candy, cake and blue jello. Their cake depicted an icon of Constantine. Sweet!

Advent Chapel

Last Friday was the final chapel of the semester. As is our custom, the final chapel of the Fall semester is the PIU Advent Chapel. The chapel (well kind of!) begins the Christmas season at PIU. Mike and the chapel worship team, as usual, put together a very creative, worshipful and fun Christmas chapel. Almost everyone got to participate in some way. I know I went out feeling like we had been in God’s presence. I am still learning about doing video with my phone, but thought I would mix in a few short videos of the chapel too.

The chapel band plays an upbeat version of Joy to the World

Percy and Josh lead us in some Bible readings.

Neena leads us in a Gospel reading

The chapel band did several different styles of songs. Jesse even got out his banjo for “I Saw Three Ships”

Jessie and Jonie light the peace candle

The band leads us in “What Child is This?”

God bless us all, everyone!