Thanksgiving Chapel

The PIU Thanksgiving celebration got to an early start on Tuesday with our traditional thanksgiving chapel. This year the chapel was an informal opportunity for the whole PIU family to express their thankfulness to God in pretty much any way they wanted to do it. There were testimonies, songs, poems, stories, sermons (short ones) and lists read, sung, or spoken from students, staff and faculty. I shared my thankfulness for the fact that things have not been easy at PIU, not because I like adversity, but because it has enabled us to see God work in so many miraculous ways, often through the people around us. It is always a blessing to hear and see how God is working in so many ways within the PIU family. Here Kita and the Rollex girls sing an original song.

Joey led us in some singing and Mike was the MC. Mike also did a parody poem of “How the Grump Stole Thanksgiving.” I recorded it and will post it soon.

We enjoyed a lot of singing and some funny stories. Chapel went about 15 minutes long but nobody seemed to care.

Serenity went up front to sing a song with her mom but then made a quick decision to abstain from singing. Meanwhile Jonie handled our sound system with obvious enthusiasm.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the Celebration of God’s goodness and provision for us.

Fall 2012 PIU Alumni Fellowship

I arrived back on Guam on Friday night. The very next night we held the Fall 2012 PIU-MIBS-PIBC alumni fellowship. The fellowship was held on our Guam campus and we had over 40 of our alumni there. It was great to see all of them including many I had not see in some time. We enjoyed a meal, fellowship and a worship service together. It was great to hear how so many of our alumni are making such an impact on their churches and communities. Here are a few pictures of the evening events…

PIU Alumni Director Billy Edwin (left) planned and coordinated the event. Angelika and Stella handled the music and presented a slide show with lots of old and new pictures of alumni. I had the opportunity to encourage the group from scripture.

There was a lot of good fellowship and getting caught up on what everybody has been doing

It was also good to see our alumni family growing.  Here we pose with 2009 graduate Sonny and 2010 graduate Elilai and their little one, Serenity. I also posted some pictures of their wedding back in 2009.

The food was good and the fellowship was better. Thank you Billy and team for a great evening!

TRACS Conference

On Wednesday the 7th I  flew from San Diego to Chicago for the TRACS Conference. PIU has been accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools since 1999 and I have attended every annual conference since 2001. This year’s conference was at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare and I attended with PIU administrator Nino Pate. There were several helpful seminars and I thought this was one of the better conferences I have attended. It was good to be able to compare notes with other presidents of small Christian colleges and it is good to see more schools from the Asia and Pacific region joining TRACS. Next year the conference will be a little closer to us in San Diego.

 

On the left is the view from the window of our hotel room. On the right is the view from the elevator as we headed from the 9th floor to the lobby.

Thursday evening banquet

On the left TRACS president Paul Boatner recognizes the newly accredited TRACS schools. On the right Nino poses with the Starbucks gift card he won in the drawing on the final day of the conference. Nino then flew to Denver for another conference while I flew to North Carolina.

My time in Southern California

  I am now back on Guam and trying to get my body and brain back on to Guam time. We have already begun celebrating Thanksgiving week with several events at the school and I will post on them soon. But before I do that I will make a few posts about my recently completed trip to the US Mainland. From Northern California I headed down to San Diego on November 5th. After spending a little time in the afternoon with my son Matt and grandson Milo, I headed over to have dinner with Sam and Maria Keckler and Scott and Mishe Harvey. Maria was our main speaker in February at our “Story Crafting Conference” and Sam spoke in chapel and at some churches. We plan to expand the 2013 conference into a “Story Crafting and Teacher Training Conference” this coming March and hope to add Mishe as one of the speakers. I had a great time with the two couples talking about PIU ministry possibilities and, as usual, the enchiladas were amazing.

I spent Tuesday up at Azusa Pacific University. My Baymonte Christian High School classmate, Craig Wallace, is now the Alumni Director at APU and he gave me access to several administrators there to talk about possible articulation agreements, APU mission trips to PIU and other possibilities for working together. I was very appreciative of the time they spent with me and am hoping and praying that we will be able to put into action some of the things we talked about.

  That evening we let Milo choose the restaurant and so Matt, Kristin, Milo and I headed to Soup Plantation. Sorry, I took several family pictures while in So Cal but forgot to take pictures at the Kecklers’ or at APU.  The “angelic effect” here on Milo’s picture was not planned and it may be a prophetic miracle (just kidding). Joyce is planning to head to San Diego in March for the birth of grandchild number 6 (grand-daughter #4) for us.

Travel in Northern California

I am wrapping up my annual Fall trip to the US Mainland and am writing this from the Washington-Dulles airport. I think this has been a successful trip (I have been so busy I have had very little time to post to the blog) with connections made for fund raising and student-staff recruiting. I have also been able to meet a lot of interesting people. I will post some pictures (didn’t take very many this time) over the next couple days from various stops on my trip covering the last couple weeks.Hopefully, the next post will come from Guam. The pictures with this paragraph are from a luncheon at First Baptist Church Redding CA. FBCR has been supporting our ministry since 2002 and I appreciated the church hosting a lunch for me. It was good to see our friends there again and share about the new things that are happening at PIU.

From Redding I headed to Santa Cruz. The first night I was there I had the opportunity to join a Bible study hosted by Dave and Sally Beck. We have known the Becks and McKims (left) since about 1980 and it was an unexpected blessing to be able to spend some time with them. We also had a very encouraging prayer time.

In Santa Cruz I was able to speak at Gateway Bible Church and meet with pastors and missions committee members. On the left is me with Laura McCabe, wife of John McCabe. It was good to be able to see Laura and talk to her about the great impact John had on the students and staff at PIU during the time he spent with us. On the right, I am comparing chin whiskers with Mike Snyder. Mike has me beat by quite a bit!

Some pictures coming from the Southern California portion of my trip next….

Susanville Ministry

Last weekend I enjoyed my annual trip to Susanville for the conference with the Palauan groups from all over the US Mainland at 1st Baptist Church of Susanville. It was good to see so many former students and old friends. This year former PIU teachers Eric and Karyn Sorenson were also part of the teaching team for the conference. It was great to see them again and I was encouraged by their continuing desire to be part of the ministry at PIU. Karyn will be doing ministry in Guam and Yap before I even get back from this trip. Here are a few pictures from the weekend with the Palauans and Susanville Baptist Church people.

This is the 4th time I have been to this conference and each time I have had the opportunity to train the Palauan church leaders in Bible study methods and exegesis. This year we discussed how to interpret, teach and preach biblical narratives. Here the groups are working their way through the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac.

There was a lot of good music and dancing

Each group made a musical presentation. Pastor John Murdock preached on Friday night and I preached on Saturday night.

We met again on Sunday morning at 8 AM before everyone headed back home. I stayed around for the 11 AM service and headed down to Redding the next day.