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!