Another Beautiful Guam Hike

Joyce's preferred form of entertainment is hiking so, while I was in the office, she joined several other PIU staff, along with some of our friends from the Lutheran Church on a hike a couple Monday afternoons ago. Here are a few of the pictures they took. I know the waterfall is near the Nimitz Towers area but I don't know too much else about it. I thought the pictures were beautiful though.

Nice pose among the bamboo and ferns

Daisy Murdock among the bamboo and a shot of the waterfall from above

It is a beautiful spot. I guess I should get out more.

Thursday Night is Babysitting Night at the Owen House

Thursday has been our night with the grand-kids this semester. Samantha has a Bible study that night at their house and Mike needs an uninterrupted evening for study, so we handle the three little cuties for the evening. We have a lot of fun making macaroni or pancakes for dinner, wrestling, playing dress-up or building forts in the backyard. Titus and Courage also enjoy the fact that we have a lot more available cartoons on TV than they have at home. I usually pick up the bigger two when I am done for the day at PIU and then Joyce picks up Serenity on her way home from the Japanese school. They totally wear us out, but we want to enjoy them as much as we can while they live so near us.

One evening we received an early visit from the Easter Bunny and a surprise visit from the tooth fairy.

We have very much enjoyed being involved in Serenity's life almost from the beginning. She is starting to crawl around the house now.

February Events - Liebenzell Micronesia Meetings

Usually during the PIU board meetings, since we have so many of the global Liebenzell missionary representatives here, we also have a meeting of the Liebenzell missionaries who are working in Micronesia. At this point in time almost all the LM missionaries in Micronesia are working at PIU, but we need to get together to talk over mission business, hear how Liebenzell's other fields are doing and enjoy fellowship with one another. This year we held the meeting at the Wood's home on Tuesday evening, enjoyed their beautiful view and opportunity to talk and relax together.

With the global missions leadership here (Bill Schuit and Martin Auch pictured) we also wanted to use the time for a mission leadership meeting. So we met Monday and Tuesday morning at my house to go over several pressing issues. One of the biggest agenda items was the discussion of ideas for partnership between Liebenzell, PIU and the Micronesian churches to send out missionaries to unreached areas. There is a lot of enthusiasm for this from all parties and we are excited about the possibilities of seeing Liebenzell help to send out Micronesian missionaries all over the world.

 Marcellus Ngiraingas, Rob Watt, Hartmut Scherer and Harald Gorges enjoy some conversation. 

Steve Bradley and I discuss a heavy theological topic - it might have been NFL football

We did have a pretty relaxing evening.

February Events - 2011 PIU Annual Board Meeting

I have been very busy lately so, again, I am a little behind with my blog posting. I will be making a few posts today about some important things that happened in the last couple weeks. One very important event, and one that kept us very busy, was the 2011 annual Board of Trustees meeting for Pacific Islands University. It is hard for me to believe that this was my 9th annual board meeting as president of the school. This year we were very excited to welcome a new board member, David Mayer, from North Carolina and to welcome the members of our new advisory board. The meeting took place at Agana Heights Baptist Church (above right) February 23 to 25. I felt like this was one of our most productive board meetings during my time as president of the school and I am very excited about the direction we, as a school, are headed.

One of the key issues of discussion was the long-range plan for our facilities. With the approval of our accreditor, TRACS, and the US Department of Education of our new Bachelor's and Associates degrees in liberal studies, which will be offered for the first time in the Fall of this year, we expect a steady increase in our student body over the next few years. We cannot expand on our current property because of new Environmental Protection Agency regulations so we are looking for another way to expand. Our board and administration is now looking for 1) an already constructed property that will meet our needs to updgrade our facilitty and accomodate up to 400 students or 2) a property that we can build to meet our specific needs. Either way we will need to raise about 5 million dollars over the next 3-5 years to meet this goal. We would appreciate your prayers as we look for God's direction on this.

The PIU Board of Trustees consists of David Mayer, Martin Auch - Global Director Liebenzell Mission International,  Bill Schuit, Global Director Liebenzell Mission USA, Mary Johnson - Guam, me in the middle, Marcellus Ngiraingas - Palauan Evangelical Church, Harald Gorges - Micronesia Area Director Liebenzell Mission, Vincent Parren - Yap Evangelical Church. Howard Merrell is not pictured. He joined the meeting this year from Virginia by Skype. 

Our administrative council: Eric Sorenson, Seminary Dean; Lisa Collins, Director of Libraries; Me; Melody Plaxton, Academic VP; Rob Watt, Student Life VP; Celia Atoigue, COO, Steve Stinnette, VP Advancement; Samantha Owen, Administrative Assistant to the President; JC Yoon, Academic Dean and Nino Pate, Director of Institutional Effectiveness. 

And here is everybody together. We are very blessed to have such a great group of people in leadership at PIU.

Joyce at the Japanese School of Guam

This past week Joyce just finished another semester of teaching at the Japanese School of Guam. The school is run by the Japanese government and is for Japanese citizens living on the island of Guam. Their kids are able to follow a Japanese curriculum and schedule so that they will be tracking with the students in their homeland when they return to Japan. Joyce has been teaching English to 1st through 8th graders there for the past two years and enjoys working there very much. Friday there was an end of the year celebration and farewell party for the teachers who will be returning to Japan. This year most of the Japanese teachers are leaving including the principal so Joyce will have a new boss there next school year (which begins in May).

One interesting thing that happened this semester was a visit of several professional athletes to the school, including an Olympic gold medalist in judo, a race car driver and members of the Osaka Tigers baseball team. Several Japanese professional baseball teams have used Guam as a "spring training" venue over the last few years. Guam has a beautiful, modern sports complex up at the Leo Palace which is used by Japanese soccer teams as well as baseball teams. We went up there when the Osaka Tigers were there and watched a little bit of their workouts. Our PIU staff likes to go up to Leo Palace to go bowling or sing karaoke. In the picture above the students are greeting the players. And then, a kid's dream, they got to play catch with the pro baseball players.

Joyce enjoys the opportunity to be out in the community and has been able to do many fun and interesting things through her connection to the Japanese school. She will enjoy her Spring Break and plans to return there in May.

PIU Sponsors Orality Conference on Guam and Palau

Last month PIU hosted a group from Gateway and Collide Churches in Scotts Valley California. Along with several construction projects (See previous posts) the group also led a seminar on Orality. Orality trains people to craft and tell stories from the Bible so that they can effectively present the Gospel through story-telling and serves as a church planting tool as the "trainer" story-teller trains the listeners to tell the stories to their circle of friends and family. This is a very effective tool for discipleship in the oral cultures of our students from the Pacific Islands. It was great to see the enthusiastic response of our students and in the community in Guam and Palau. 

Ryan tells the story of the demon possessed man while Kerrie acts it out.

Then Charles and Davey both tell the story

Jim tells the story of the apostles' dramatic escape from prison from the Book of Acts

Kita then repeats it with the help of all the audience.

It is a very effective way to draw people into a non-threatening discussion about spiritual things

 

Orality is a quickly learned and very effective method to share the Gospel and teach the Bible. It is a return to one of the most prominent methodologies Jesus used in His teaching. I am excited to see our students practicing it as they reach out in their ministries.

Almost Completed PIU Driveway Phase 1

We have been enjoying the completion of phase 1 of our driveway project for about two weeks now. Well, we are almost done with phase 1. We are still waiting for a bid for our gate. Local fencing contractors are so busy nobody has had time to come out and make a bid on the gate. This morning we were discussing fabricating it ourselves. We are also beginning to raise money for phase 2 and 3. Phase 2 will complete the driveway all the way past the administration building and provide some needed parking. Phase 3 will complete the driveway all the way over to the library and will provide some parking on that side of the campus. In the picture left, Robin and I are checking out the just completed driveway a couple weeks ago. On the right you can see part of where phase 2 will go just beyond our car.