Driveway at PIU #2 - Preparing and Pouring the Concrete

After the digging and forming work was done for the driveway in the middle of the week we planned to pour the concrete on Thursday. However we were rain delayed until Saturday. This made Saturday a very long day for all the work crew. But amazingly, everything was ready when the concrete pumper came and the project was completed in a day with a cooperative effort of students, staff and volunteers. Here are a few pictures from the day's work...

The morning began with tieing in the rebar. Everly here shows the right way to do it.

Right in the middle of the morning PIU had a basketball game so several of us took an hour to cheer on the Tide.

I got back in time to sign the check to pay for the concrete. Now it is paid for and ready to pour.

That pumper could pour that concrete pretty quickly. The guys had to work fast to get it smoothed

Robin has the water hose ready to go to keep the concrete moist

Ben and Everly give it a nice smooth finish

Joyce and Courage watch as the guys make sure the rocks all are pushed down through the concrete and we get it smooth. 

Watching the tandem parachuters come down was also very interesting.

We were thankful that Paul donated a whole day on Saturday to get the concrete poured correctly

The pumper truck poured most of the driveway but could not fit into the gate to pour the end of it and connect it to the road.

The guys got a little extra time to prepare the last part of the driveway for the rest of the cement

Eventually the new truck showed up for the last part of the pour

The driveway was connected up to the paved road outside the gate.

The concrete was worked with care

The job was almost done!

It's done! Now we wait 24 hours for it to dry - a week before heavy trucks can drive on it.

New Driveway for PIU #1

One of the big jobs completed with the help of the Santa Cruz/Scotts Valley team this past weekend was a new driveway and parking area for the Pacific Islands University campus. This filled a great need on campus. According to the PIU news page on the school web site...  On the left - PIU VP of Student Life Rob Watt discusses the project with contractor Paul Kwan and Ryan, Jim and Kerrie from the California team.

Anyone who has visited our Guam campus during rainy season knows how bumpy, mucky, and miry the road into campus can get!  However, that is all history now.  Volunteers, PIU students, and staff all worked together during the first week of February. With the funds God provided via the generous donation of a local merchant, the entrance to PIU has been transformed from it’s former gravel-and-dirt surface to a smooth, broad, beautiful entrance for all to use.

This post will feature pictures of the preliminary work and the next post will have a bunch of pictures of the completion of the project.

 Paul and Celia Atoigue watch as the project begins. We are so thankful that Paul volunteered his time and expertise to us to get the project completed.

Mission Team from Santa Cruz

This last two weeks, we have had a short-term missions team from Gateway Bible and Collide churches in Scotts Valley California.  Very early this morning Michael, Joyce and I dropped the team members off at the Guam airport for the return flight to California. It is hard to believe the two weeks have gone by so quickly. They have left us with a brand new concrete driveway and entryway into our campus on Guam, a repaired deck around our computer lab, a renovated kitchen in the men's dorm, many other smaller completed projects and personal ministry in the lives of our students, staff and faculty. In addition several seminars in "Orality" were given that blessed our campus, along with the Guam and Palau communities. This is the 3rd year in a row that the team has come out to our islands and there were a lot of "see you next year" goodbyes said at yesterdays 'thank you" fiesta for the team

The team consisted of Jim Bartell, Kerrie Weitzel and John McCabe who were also part of the Yap team in 2009 and 2010. Coming for the first time were Ryan Torchio and Robin, Joanne and Zack Sukow. Jim, Kerrie and Ryan arrived first and got busy on several projects. Robin arrived a couple days later and focused on directing our driveway project. Jim, Kerrie and Ryan taught an orality seminar for PIU students and then, after a week, headed to Palau for a week-long orality seminar for the Palauan Evangelical Church. John flew straight to Palau to join them and to direct the seminars in Palau. The same day Joanne and Zack joined Robin on Guam. Robin worked with our students to get the driveway completed (will post some pictures of this soon) and had some time for other small projects and a little sight-seeing.

Yesterday, Jim, Ryan, Kerrie and John returned to Guam from Palau and, with very little sleep after their all-night flight, led an orality seminar for the Guam church community in the afternoon on the PIU campus. After the seminar the whole campus celebrated with a fiesta to thank the team for their contribution to our campus and ministries. We ended the evening by attending the PIU Tide's first basketball win in the Guam Business League. Robin and Joanne missed the afternoon festivities because she broke her wrist in a snorkeling mishap. (They are not in the picture above because they were at the ER at Guam Memorial Hospital.) The doctors were able to fix her up enough for her to travel on to Hawaii today to get further treatment there.

Our thanks go out to the "Santa Cruz team" members. We also are very thankful for the financial and prayer support provided by the people at Gateway and Collide that enabled them, not only to come, but to provide finances for materials for the projects. We are very blessed to be partners with you in doing God's kingdom work in Micronesia!

Family Time

We love living on Guam but the hardest thing for us about living here is being so far from family. We are blessed to have Mike, Sam and the kids here with us now and we were also blessed to have our other two kids visit during the past two months. So here are a couple more pictures of things we do as we enjoy our time with our kids and grand-kids. The picture here is from the last night of Missy and Cliff's vacation here. We took the picture right after a PIU basketball game at the Tamuning Gym.

One of our favorite restaurants on Guam is Chili's. Since Cliff works for the parent company of Chili's we had to go there while he was here. I know that Cliff was impressed with the quality of the food and service but was a little surprised that the Guam prices were higher (although not so much after he realized that sales taxes are included in the price on Guam). After we eat at Chili's we usually take the kids over to Guam Premium Outlets to play in the mall play area.

We also now have a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant on Guam. Joyce and I took the kids there a while back. Titus and Courage were overwhelmed with joy upon seeing the games, rides and play equipment. Serenity enjoyed the lights. They were not so sure about wanting to get close to Chuck E. Cheese himself. However, we get regular requests from Titus and Courage to make a return visit.

"Cell Phone in the Refrigerator" Days

Yesterday was a "cell phone in the refrigerator" day. A "CPIR" day is one of those days where you get so many things going on that you forget what you need to do or get distracted from one important thing by another urgent or important thing.  For example, I am on my way to chapel and I get into a conversation, then I see something that needs my attention. When I am done with that, I forget that I was on my way to chapel and go back to my office to work on something else. Then I happen to glance at my calendar and see that it is Tuesday and I have missed half of a chapel I really wanted to attend. So I rush over and at least get to hear the message. This happened this past Tuesday so maybe it is a "CPIR" week. Yesterday I overslept, forgot appointments, started at least 3 emails and then forgot to finish them etc etc. To top it off I went down to Rev and Tax to renew my Driver's License (which I forgot to do on my birthday) and they were closed for renovations. Yikes!

The reason that I call these "cell phone in the refrigerator days" is an incident that happened a couple weeks ago. Normally, when I come in to the PIU office in the morning I am carrying my computer bag and my lunch. Usually the first thing I do is stick my lunch in the refrigerator and then get myself set up for the day in the office. That morning I noticed that, after my set up routine, my lunch was sitting on my desk. I thought I had already put it into the refrigerator but, not thinking too much about it, I got up and put my lunch into the fridge. A little while later Joyce came in and said she had been trying to call me on my cell all morning and was wondering why I wasn't answering.  I said that I didn't hear it ring and I was sure my cell was turned on. When I reached into my pocket it wasn't there. We looked all over my office, the school and the car for that phone and would have gone home to look for it unless someone just happened to ask me why there was a cell phone that looked like mine sitting in the refrigerator. How it got out my pocket into the fridge I will never know.

I suppose now that I am officially "old" a case could be made for some degeneration of the brain. I prefer to think that it is so many things going on that my brain just "misfiles" a few things. CPIR days often involve a lot of administrative things that I would rather not do, but need to be done. However, the good side of these CPIR days is that the "distractions" often involve visitors to our campus, ministry opportunities with students and, yesterday, two long good talks with staff members that were very encouraging to me and I hope to them too. I suppose I could use these CPIR weeks as an excuse for why I haven't posted lately - My plan is to get caught up this week - but probably they are just a normal part of ministry.

Student Statistics for PIU Spring 2011

Yesterday the PIU registrar published our official enrollment statistics for the new semester. I was happy to see that we have slightly increased our student body. We usually have a lower enrollment in the Spring than Fall because of December graduates. This semester our total number of students is 101.

This number includes 5 students in the Master of Arts in Religion program, 70 in the Bachelor's program and 12 in AA program. We have one Bible certificate student and 13 non-program students.

We have 53 male and 48 female students. Since I have been here we usually have had more female than male students. The largest ethnic group by far is the Chuukese with 51. We have 14 Palauans, 4 Yapese and 14 Caucasians. We also have students from Pohnpei, the Marshall Islands, China, Korea, Bangladesh, Philippines and of course Guam.

Most of our students are full time (65), but we have 31 part-time students and 5 auditing. 46 of our students live on-campus in our dormitories.

A lot of numbers I know, but each one is a unique character, created in the image of God and part of our PIU family. We have the privilege of helping each of them become what God created them to be. 

We appreciate your prayers for our students this semester!

Some More Pictures of the Beach

Here are a few more photos of our beach adventures while Missy and Cliff were here in January. Hopefully, this will warm up you US Mainlanders  a little.

We got to see several interesting critters.

Cliff and Missy tried to get as much beach time as possible in before they had to leave.

Shark's Hole is a great place for a hike, swim or snorkeling

We enjoyed the beautiful view from Two Lovers' Point

And of course made a tourist pose.