End of February Prayer Requests

It is hard to believe that we are already almost to the end of February. We are already well into the Spring semester at PIBC. We know that many of you who read this blog are praying for Joyce and I regularly, and we appreciate it very much. It seems to me after many years of teaching that February-March are the hardest months to get through for schools. I don't know why, but often it seems that both the faculty and the students lose their focus. So I would appreciate very much your prayers for us as we get through the next couple months and then head into the final leg of the 2008-9 school year. Here are some specific requests you could be praying for us.

• PIBC is in our accreditation reaffirmation year. We will be receiving a visit from a TRACS team in mid-May. This means we need to complete our Self-Study (a huge undertaking) near the end of February. Please pray that we can do a good job with this and get it done on time.
• I am working on the self-study, trying to implement the new board directives (more on this in the next post) and teaching one senior undergrad class (Exegesis in Genesis) and one seminary class (OT Survey). Joyce is teaching one PIBC English class, three English classes at the Japanese school and taking three PIBC classes. Please pray that we can get all this done and come out OK at the end of the semester. ;)
• We need to fill several positions at our various PIBC sites. Please pray that God brings in the right people to fill these ministries for us by this summer. If you are interested in being the answer to one of these prayers please email me.

1. Academic Vice President
2. Executive Administrator
   
3. Business Manager Guam
4. Administrator for Tol, Chuuk Teaching Facility
5. Remedial English Program Teacher/Administrator Chuuk
6. Weno Teaching Facility Administrator

• Pray for Joyce and I that we will continue to grow in our relationship to God, to each other and with the people we work with and minister to.
  

We appreciate your prayers for our ministry. We are thankful that God's work is in God's hands, and they are good hands. As the LORD said to Abraham, "Is anything too hard for the LORD?"

Board Meeting Day #1

This past week we just completed the annual PIBC board of trustees meeting. This year it was held at the Guam United Methodist Church which is just a short drive down Route 15 (the back road to Andersen Air Force Base) from our campus. Our business manager Cheryl Boydston is the secretary there and Fred Agtarap, their pastor is an adjunct teacher in our seminary. The first day of the meeting was mainly discussion of the school's vision and a time to get hold of the big picture. Probably the most important item of business for the first day was the installation of Mary Johnson as a new board member (pictured left). Mary was our English teacher and Academic VP before she took a job with her denomination (the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) and is the wife of the local ELCA church pastor Jeff Johnson. The Guam Lutheran Church has been a very solid supporter of PIBC since the Johnsons arrived about 5 years ago. I am very excited to have Mary on board as a board member. She has a great deal of educational expertise and experience which will be of great benefit to the school. It will also be nice to have another local person on our executive committee for me to go to for advice and bounce ideas off of.

The first day ended with a board, staff, faculty and student bbq on the campus basketball court. Our dean of men, Hiob Ngirachemoi, and several students bbq'd the ribs and chicken and, along with the red rice, potato salad, ice cream and cookies we had an island feast. Each of the board members were introduced, students shared songs and testimonies and we all got a couple hours to relax, meet and greet. It was also nice that the rain held off until well after the program was over.

Joyce and Her Missions Class

This semester one of Joyce's three classes is Micronesian Church History, taught by our Liebenzell Micronesia Regional Director, Harald Gorges. Joyce says that it is one of the most interesting classes she has taken at PIBC. I can see as I sometimes look over her shoulder, (Don't worry Harald, I am not hepling her do her quizzes!) that Harald has done some great research for the course and has the class reading some very interesting primary source reference materials. The class also seems to do a lot of fun things, like watch movies that deal with missions and cultural subjects or go on field trips. They have been studying the Spanish period in Missions history so they are taking advantage of opportunities to visit old Spanish, and other, historical sites all over Guam.

So while I was in the first day of the three-day annual PIBC board meeting, Joyce was out touring Guam with the missions class. (The above left picture is not Spanish - Joyce is standing in front of the first Protestant church building on Guam). As you can see from the pictures they got all around the island. After all why just read about history from a book when you can go out and touch it? To the left the class enjoys the old Spanish bridge.

From the reports of the class, the highlight of the trip was the carabao ride at Fort Soledad in Umatac. This is the site where the Spanish under Magellan made first contact with the indigenous people of Guam. The fort was built much later and is a popular spot for tourists and sometimes for locals - I have been to a couple weddings up there. I am sure the class was very interested in finding out the history of the place, but it seems that most of the pictures were taken of the carabao ride. Joyce enjoyed her ride. You can also see a video of it complete with comments by her classmates on my Facebook page. By the way, you can connect with me on Facebook by clicking the link "My Facebook Profile" below right under "other interesting links." It will be interesting to see what the Missions class does next.

Yap #3 - The Teaching Facility

As I mentioned before, the main purpose for my visit to Yap was checking on how the PIBC facility renovation was going and meeting with the Yap Evangelical Church leadership to discuss the operation and use of the building. I had an enjoyable meeting with YEC leadership and we pretty much agreed about the use of the building. We want to see the facility used by both PIBC and the Yap churches. Outside of PIBC, there really are no theological libraries in Micronesia and we want ours to be accessible throughout Micronesia, so we have been adding books to the TF libraries in Chuuk and Palau in addition to our very full library on the Guam campus. With a new building in Yap we can send more books there. We hope to begin some PIBC courses on Yap in the Fall, even before the building is finished with windows and air conditioning. These classes would probably be "hybrid," with intensive classroom sessions and then homework and on line discussion done through our PIBC distance education web site. Internet access on Yap has improved some since I was there in 2007 with wireless access, but the maximum speed of 64Kbs still limits what we can do with class content delivery. We are hoping and praying that by the time the Gateway team returns to finish the building in 2010 we will also have the fiber optic cable delivering broadband to our TF's in Yap and Palau.

Operational costs for the Yap Teaching Facility will also be a challenge. The Yap church has agreed to provide some volunteer labor and staffing for the facility, but we figure that we will need about 12-15, 1/2 time, program students each semester there to cover PIBC's operating costs. Before the typhoon in 2004 we normally had about 7-10 students in Yap taking one course. The situation has changed somewhat in Yap so the YEC leadership was confident that we would have the numbers to operate. Please pray along with us that the PIBC Yap Teaching Facility becomes a learning and discipleship center for the churches of Yap and an academic launching pad for Yapese desiring Christian higher education.

Yap #2 - Alumni

One of the other fun things about travel through Micronesia is getting to see the PIBC alumni and finding out what they are doing throughout the islands. This trip was no different. On Wednesday night, the PIBC alumni hosted a dinner for me up at the mission guest apartments there. This time I got to meet with Asael, Charity and Tim Ruda, Jonathan and Momoe Tamag (and their very cute little girl) and Mac Alfonso. Charity spent last summer as an English instructor at College of Micronesia on Yap and is now teaching in the Colonia, Yap Gospel Kindergarten. She will be getting married this coming summer in Chuuk to Jonathan Sam another PIBC graduate. I am not sure if they will be ministering in Yap or Chuuk after they get married. Jonathan Tamag is working as a counselor in the hospital and jail in Yap. Jonathan is also working with Asael in the preaching rotation at the Colonia YEC. He and Momoe are active leading Bible studies and other ministries too. Mac Alfonso leads the youth group for the Yap Churches and helps with a variety of ministries. Tim Ruda is active in church activities and is also a leader in the Yap Youth Congress. We are hoping he will return to PIBC soon and finish up his degree. Asael continues to work (about 12 years now) as a missionary pastor from Chuuk to the Yap Church. He is now the head pastor in Yap and is also very active in reaching out to the many outer islanders coming in to Yap proper. All the alumni are very excited about the refurbished PIBC classroom in Yap and the opportunity to get the PIBC library there out of boxes and back on to the shelves where the books can be used for ministry preparation and personal study. One of my favorite parts of the trip was the couple hours we spent talking over the theological and ministry issues that these alumni have been running into over the last few months. It is great to see them taking the things they learned in class and using and adapting them to meet the needs in Yap. Their questions stretched my mind a bit and I was very encouraged to hear what God is doing through them and challenged to pray for them as they continue to grow and face their own ministry issues. Plus, I am pretty proud of all of them!

Yap #1

I am just back from Yap where I spent two days checking on our PIBC building renovation project, meeting with alumni, recruiting students, meeting with the Yap Church leaders and other friends in Yap. I am very excited about the renovation of the building. The team from Gateway, Jim, John and Kerry, have assembled a great team of Yapese co-workers and have made a lot of progress in the past two weeks. I know they wish they could have gotten it closer to being finished but I am amazed that they got so much of an ambitious project done. The bathrooms are almost done, the inside rooms are cleaned, painted and prepared and the extension room has the walls up. We were hoping to start on the roof while I was there but one day of constant rainfall slowed things up a bit. They are hoping to have everything done but the windows and air conditioning before the the Gateway team leaves next Wednesday. We hope they will be able to come back this time next year to finish that part of it.

It is also great to see how many relationships these guys have built with local workers, merchants and pastors. The strategy to hire local workers and introduce them to the church and to Christ while training them has been effective. Jim and Kerry both shared with me several of the opportunities they have had to bring the conversations to spiritual issues and they have helped to create an interest in the church among many of the workers. I am also appreciative that they are enthusiastic student recruiters for PIBC as well. The building should be finished enough so that we can run some classes without the computer lab starting next Fall. With the planned installation of windows and AC's next year we can begin operating the TF fully with distance education classes in Fall 2010. More on Yap on my next post....

Super Bowl Monday Party

This morning all of Guam stopped business for Super Bowl Monday - an unofficial island holiday. Most of the PIBC family met over at our house to watch the game. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed one of the more entertaining Super Bowls in recent memory. The group was pretty much evenly split between Steeler and Cardinal fans. I just wanted to see a good game and enjoy the people, the food and the relaxed and fun atmosphere. Everyone at PIBC works very hard, and it can be stressful at times, so it is good to have some time where we can relax and act a little crazy. Since the game starts on this side of the dateline on Monday morning at 9:00, the food is a curious mix of breakfast, snacks, and lunch items. This year there was hot wings, meatballs, chili, donuts, cookies, chips, sodas, coffee, fruit and other tasty options. Also, since my birthday comes up this week while I am away on a trip to Yap, Joyce made my favorite triple chocolate cake. I think everyone enjoyed it and it made its way on to my plate several times. Now I'll get back to work and prepare for the PIBC board meeting after a nice little break. Now I am thinking that the 49ers must win the 2010 Super Bowl (if the Cardinals can come this close anything is possible) to get back into a tie with Pittsburgh for most Super Bowl wins.