Just Hanging Out

Students and Staff just hanging out during Spritiual Emphasis Weekend.

Coconut Branch Weaving

This is Delight. No that IS his name. Of course he is a delight too but that is another topic. Delight and his wife Evelyn (above) are staff at PIBC. Evelyn is also a graduate. Delight works with the students in helping them get financial aid. Evelyn is the Chuukese liason. Here Delight is weaving a mat out of coconut palm fronds for him to sleep on.

Early Evelyn made us some stirring stirs out of palm fronds because no one remembered to pack spoons. These two would do very well on Survivor.... actually I believe most islanders would fair pretty well in many of the situations that they use in the show.

Bar-b-que is BIG

For spiritual emphasis weekend - there is always lots of food involved, especially Bar-b-que. This year, Hollie was able to rent us a HUGE grill, from the Military Recreation group. It was huge which was good since when you are cooking for about 80 people - there is a lot of meat that needs to be cooked. Some of our cooks were Jerome, Hansen, Jeffrey and Jayleen.
Ribs, Brisket, and Chicken made up our Saturday evening feast. We served it with rice and salad.
Coolers not only work for keeping things cool but also to keep things warm. When making so much food, they really come in handy. Molly and Jayleen sampling are doing some taste testing and showing off for the camera.

Be Still and Know that I am God Psalm 46:10

To start off our Spiritual Emphasis weekend we challenged our students to spend some time in solitude and silence.
We also encouraged them to spend that time praying and meditating on Scripture.... seeking God's direction in their lives. The students spend a lot of time in all their classes learning about the bible and God but we also hope they develop first hand experience of God in their lives. The green book is a guide I created to help them structure their time.
Many of the students really enjoyed the time.
Even Hollie was able to take some time to spend some time praying and reflecting on life's direction.

Hop On the Bus Gus

This year for our Spiritual Emphasis Retreat we rented a bus so we could get all the students down to the retreat site in one trip. We camped on a private beach about 30 minutes south of the school. Unfortunately only 50 of the students fit on the bus. The rest went in the vans and in private cars. This was the first time for many of our students to ride on a big bus. On most of their islands there are not enough people to warrent having a big bus. Some of them liked it - Some of them didn't.

Going Postal

One of the things I do here at PIBC is go to the post office and pick up the mail three times a week. Most people on Guam have P.O. boxes. Many houses in Guam are really down dirt roads in the middle of no where and have no real street address. This often leads to very long lines at the post office. Previously they had a seperate line for people who were just picking up packages or mail that does not fit in their boxes. Now everyone has to wait in the same line. Usually when you get there the line is quite long. It is quite normal to have to wait 20minutes before getting to the counter for service. Although the wait can be as long as 45 minutes. It all depends on how many people in front of you have how many things to mail, money orders to get, or stamps to buy. Some days when I get the mail, I think "I hope there are no packages today because I really don't want to stand in line". Today I got to the post office and there was not one person in line. No one was even being waited on. It was a modern day miracle. I hoped and prayed for packages. We are waiting for several, including chocolate from Holland. However, none arrived today. I didn't even need stamps. How sad. What a waste of a miracle.

Drowning Thoughts

This week Harald Gorges is away. He was at a Pastor's conference in Palau and then went to visit the church in Yap. While he was gone I promised to proctor an exam for him. Basically I just handed out the test and collected it. Brad's class is in the Library before it opens. When I taught last year, there was no other class at the same time. As I was sitting there trying to read, it was very hard to concentrate.... because I could hear very clearly the lecture of the professor in the next class room. It must be hard focusing while trying to take a test on a completely different subject.

Although after awhile I could no longer hear the teacher next door. It started to rain. The rain was so loud that it actually drown out the voice of the other teacher..... it is so loud at times - it sometimes makes it even difficult to think. If you watch the very short video - all the noise that sounds like static is rain on our tin roof. Although we are hoping to add insulation in the roof to provide some sound proofing from the noise of the rain, this video is more to display a prayer need for PIBC. We are in desperate need of more and better class space. We are hoping to raise funds to start a building which would have better class rooms and office space for our increasing staff.

They've Moved....

My neighbors, the Farnsworths, including Amelia pictured here, have now moved. In the evening, I walked over to visit them. I played a little with Joel and Amelia and talked with Marisol. Amelia now has her own big girl bed. She was exicted to show it to me. However when I left she did not understand. She thought I should just have a "door" in her new house like I had in her old place. Fortunately they are not too far away but I will still miss them ALOT.

Almost Back

Brad Boydston (VP of Academics, Professor, et al.) and Dave Owen (President, Professor) have been traveling in the US. They have been working on recruiting teachers and other positions which we need both in Guam but mostly on our Chuuk campus. They also attended the TRACS conference which is the organization who gives us our accreditation. I am excited to report that Brad is coming back on Thursday morning. I have been "teaching" (more facilitating) his class while he was gone for 2.5 weeks. Although in some respects I enjoy it - I am glad to be giving back the reigns to him.

Dave will not be back for another week as he is currently in Schooley's Mountain at the Liebenzell USA headquarters for the board meeting.

What's Up?

The Sky, the Ceiling and a Preposition.... :o) This type of humor seems to be well appreciated by Micronesians.

Some Highlights of the Last week....

The church I am attending had their annual mission's conference. They highlighted some local ministries including Pacific Islands Bible College. We took a group of students to the Wednesday night program who sang and gave some testimonies. I really was proud of them.... (of course I am most times). Even on Sunday some came up to me and thanked us for the music. It is not too often that they get an opportunity to use their gifts of music in that church because it is a very structured service.

The Campus Ministry team invited people from University of Guam for a time of games (basket ball, volley ball) on Saturday night..... unforunately it got rained out.

One of the local choral groups brought in a Gospel musician. They worked really hard for a week and then put on a concert at a local church. One of the teachers involved in this group decided that it would be fun to give the students a taste of this different type of music. So I drove the van and took a group of 14 students along. They really were very good.

There was some news this week from Dave in the states. He found a lawyer who works with immigration issues who believes that Jens and Karin could be back as quickly as six weeks. So it is a possibility that they may be able to return by the beginning of the Spring Semester. (Please continue to pray about this.)

I only have one more class to run for Brad. This week I will also proctor an exam for Harald Gorges.

I along with many on campus now are struggling with the same illness.

Joyce Owen's parents arrive tonight. They will be here for a visit. We are hoping Joyce's Dad will also help with installing solar power on campus.

Bowling for Fun

For a change on a Friday night I offered a trip to the bowling alley. Only about 10 of us went but we had fun.
Bowling alleys are not common on the Islands so some of them had never been bowling.

New Doo

Here I am with my buddy Joel.... I finally broke down and got my hair cut.... so far I really like it although the layers make it harder to pull back in a pony tail.

What is God's Will for my Life?

On Tuesday I shared with the students in chapel on the topic of God's will.
For the most part everyone seemed to listen intently. Ned is even taking notes. Although at times it was hard to hear with the helicopter buzzing over campus..... (Aaron looking for his wife.)

A bunch of the students and faculty and staff assisted me by reading scriptures that I assigned to them. I was relieved when it was over but this time I really felt the peace of the Lord while I was speaking. It almost made me nervous that I didn't feel nervous. I was blessed in the end by everyone's encouragement.

Aaron Shares In Chapel

Aaron shares about his experiences in the desert of Kuwait and Iraq. Hollie assists him with the technical piece of his presentation as he shows pictures of his experiences.

One More Year

This year I enjoyed celebrating my birthday with the students and faculty and staff on Tuesday as we also celebrated getting half way through the semester. My friend Hannalore baked me a cake. It was delicious.
The Farnsworth children with my birthday gift from the family which is bigger than them. I actually picked up this box from the post office but didn't know at the time it was my birthday gift. Isn't Ned tricky?

Brief Updates

Life in the last week has been extremely busy.... I will give some pictures and other updates in a couple of days hopefully.

• Last week on Tuesday night we celebrated my birthday (early) and midterms being over with Pizza for dinner and Ice cream sundaes for an evening snack (Thanks to my parents). We also played Volleyball and basketball under the lights. Typically we don't turn the lights on the court during the week. My friend, Hanalore, also made me a birthday cake..... what a nice surprise.
• On Wednesday I had lunch with the Gorgeses and Dinner on Anderson Air Force Base at the Schaubs.... (Not the Scubas, Mac)
• Also on Wednesday I had 2 very exciting things.... I felt my first earth quake. Normally I don't notice.... but we were all in a staff meetings and some else said.... Hey it's an earthquake.... and then I said oh yeah I DO feel the building shaking. I found out that was 7.2 on the Rictor scale but approximately 300 miles away so there was no damage here on Guam and if you sneezed you might have missed it - as many did.
• My big excitement Wednesday night was while I was at Anderson Airforce Base I witnessed a B-52 Stealth Bomber taking off. Apparently they only land and take off from about 4 bases - Andersen being one of them. Pretty cool looking plane but of course at 2 billion a pop - it should be cool.
• Last week I started to teach Brad's class while he will be away for 2.5 weeks. 1 week is finished. Brad left me a lesson plan and several classes are mostly watching videos. So far things have gone fine. This week I will also proctor an exam for Harald Gorges while he is in Palau. I am hoping he gets to make a guest appearance on the show survivor which is filming it's next season there.
• The School Vans are both having issues. They must have sympathy pains because the one got a flat tire and then the other blew a radiator hose in the same day. I am thankful that it did not happen Saturday when both Ned and I did a lot of driving transporting students to their Car Wash, Basketball, and ministry.

Immigration Issues

Jens, our new campus director and CFO, and Karin, his wife who does much of our accounting among other things, are German. Jens applied for a Religious Worker Green card. His
Religious Worker Status was approved originally and was in process for
the green card. Now they received a letter saying that his Religious
Worker status has been revoked.... meaning that his job is not
specifically religious enough even though he works at a Christian
college, he has no seminary training. They had two weeks to
protest. After a week of talking to immigration lawyers and local politicians, it does not look like anything can be done to have the decision revoked.... besides a complete miracle from God.

Originally I thought they were told they had to be out of the country by November 6th. This information was incorrect. However, they will have to leave and will plan on leaving after this semester. They will go back to Germany. They must wait at least 6 months and they can apply for the appropriate VISA. I have to point out - this is the minimum time but it could potentially take years until the VISA is granted...... It is just something no one knows.

So now we are again in a position that we are looking around for a new campus director AND now an accounting type person too.

Dave Owen, our president, left Guam last Friday for the States. He is hoping to recruit teachers for PIBC especially for our Chuuk campus. Now he is also looking for someone who would like to come and serve as Campus director, Financial person, and Accounting type person. Since these are missionary positions, it would have to be someone who could raise support quickly.

Beach Picnic

Here are some images from our Beach party last week at Ypao Beach (pronounced "E - Pow"). Even though it rained a bit of the time, it did not stop us from enjoying our time at the beach.
We enjoyed hamburgers and hotdogs along with various side dishes, volleyball, swimming, and snorkeling.
The one difficult thing is now transporting our whole student body since it takes multiple trips. Overall it would seem that most everyone had a good time.

Student Led Chapels

Here at PIBC we have Chapel Tuesdays thru Fridays. Friday's chapels are student led. They plan the whole thing which usually includes some type of sharing or preaching, special numbers, music, and sometimes skits or action songs. The student council group picks a group of students on campus to lead. A couple of weeks ago, it was the men from the Cannex dorm. Happiness preached the message that day.
Then a group of the men shared a special number with Merong, one of our Palauan students, playing Guitar.

"Mini Car Wash"

Here are some pictures from the student's "Mini Car Wash" In this picture they are washing my car. As you can see from the picture, my car is not all that small. The goal was just to wash a few cars to make enough money to get enough supplies to do a bigger car wash later this Fall.
Car washes are often the main form of fund raising at PIBC and Guam in general actually. There are often people standing on the streets trying to lure you into their car wash raising funds for something or other.
The students of course could never be accused of "All work and no play".... they also love having their picture taken.... well most of the time any way.

Meet Doug

Doug is one of our new students this semester. Although our school caters mostly to Micronesian students, we do have a few students who come from other parts of the world. He is part of a military family so he has moved around a lot in his life time. He spent his freshman year at Clarion University in PA and moved to Guam to be near his older brother who is a fire fighter here on Guam. It has been fun to see him really make himself at home here. He often comes to campus even when he doesn't have classes to hang out with the other students and he even comes at 8AM on Mondays when we work on cleaning the campus. Last week he played in his first basketball game..... which by the way was the team's first win.

Visitors from Germany

In the middle of the month, we had a group of Germans come and visit us. They has come to Micronesia to celebrate with the Chuukese church, the 100th anniversary of the Gospel (and Liebenzell Mission) in Chuuk. They also stopped in Guam to visit Pacific Islands Bible College. We had a fun time even though we had a bit of difficulty communicating. We had a bar-b-que and time of fellowship with singing and skits.
It is almost impossible to have a party in Micronesia without Bar-B-Que.
Here are students each from a different nationality giving greetings in their native language until eventually it was translated in German.
This is from the famous "Chicken Soup" skit.
Micronesians love to laugh at westerners as they attempt to open coconuts. They all eventually got them open with their tools.... but then one one the students demonstarted how it was to be done. He just used a small rock and it took only a few seconds.

Rain Rain Go Away

In Guam the rainy season is roughly from June to November. Although sometimes it starts in May, like this year, and sometimes it does not end until January.

So often this year we find our selves in the pouring rain - like the Farnsworths above at the party with the Lutheran or here with Mac at the Beach party this last weekend.


More than ever our campus has been flooding. That huge pile of rocks in the center of the picture was added last year to avoid flooding in this area. Unfortunately it has not been capable of holding off the level of rains we have been having this year.

Yet life goes on and we don't let it stop us from doing what needs to be done and of course having fun as well. Although I can't say that I am not looking forward to the dry season for a change.

Lutheran Church of Guam - Not just for Lutherans any more...

Or so that is what their motto says. We here at PIBC have a special place in our hearts for the Lutheran Church here on Guam since the pastor, Jeff, is married to Mary Johnson, our VP of Academics (outgoing) and head of our English department. Also several members of our faculty and staff are regular attenders or members there. During the last week of September, they challenged the student body to game of volley ball, basket ball, balloon tosses, and elbow tag. They also came bearing delicious food. It really was a nice time even despite a rain squall which interrupted play momentarily.

Dualing Bloggers

Often time when we have events on campus, Brad and I are roaming around with our cameras hoping to get some pictures which are "blog worthy" to share with our friends and family back home so that you all can get a good idea of what it is like over here.

Occassionally we run into each other in our search for blog greatness. Here is Brad taking a picture of me taking a picture of him.

Back in Blog

Sorry for the lag in posting times.... without my own machine, I had difficulty getting pictures off my camera. Last week I got the hard drive, and originally it looked like the wrong one. Then as I was trying to find out what I did wrong when I ordered, I noticed that the old hard drive had some type of adapter on it to make it fit in the computer. So once I figured that out, I was able to get up and running pretty quickly. There is still a bunch of software that I need to re-load but that will come in time. Today I was able to down load some pictures from my camera - finally....So hopefully in the next couple of days I will be catching you up with pictures and tales of the last couple of weeks.

Random Update

• I have been sick for over a week with sinus problems. Since Joyce who started this all is still sick after 3 weeks.... I don't feel very encouraged that this will go away any time soon.

• I am still waiting for my new hard drive to come in the mail. It has been a little over a week. This to Guam take awhile. In the mean time, I check my mail in the student Study center or in the office when Cheryl is out of the office. I have been spending a bit more time reading.
  

• This Weekend we have a group of Germans who have traveled to Micronesia to see work done by Liebenzell Missionaries in Chuuk and in Guam. Last night we had a dinner and time of fellowship with the students. On Sunday, the group will join the staff for Potluck and Prayers. Only part of the group speaks English but we have enough German missionaries who speak English to translate.

• Today some of the students had a "Mini Car Wash". It was a bit confusing because they were not able to tell how small the cars had to be for them to wash them.
  

Whoops! I did it again.....

Some people wonder can you really be that stupid??? Well YES apparently I CAN. You would think after a night mare last Spring where I almost lost all my data when at the last minute it was all miraculously spared..... I might have been more likely to back up my data on a regular schedule. At the end of last week, I seriously considered it. However I thought I had a more pressing need for my memory stick when I gave it to a friend to copy some files for me. I thought WHAT are the chances something will happen this particular week. I had been absolutely fine with no signs of problems since the computer was last restored. However APPARENTLY the chances were EXTREMELY high because several days later while I was still waiting for my memory stick to return, my computer died again. Only this time when I took it to the shop, they told me there was no hope.... it was DOA (Dead on arrival) with no chance of breathing life into it.

My friend suggested that I try to start it with Linux in the disk drive.... but it still could not access the hard drive.

Another friend, who is a major geek for fun type of person (please don't think this is meant to be negative), suggested last time that I put the hard drive in a plastic bag in the freezer. That did not work either.... but it was a fun experiment.

The Computer repair place was going to charge me approximately $250 for parts and service. That seemed like way too big of investment for a 2 year old laptop. So I ordered a $60 part off the internet.... and on first appearances - it even looks like they may even mail it to Guam. (For some reason many companies will not mail electronic products to Guam.) I still have the software I need to load on the computer and I have done that more than once before even though it is a pain....my labor is free. In the mean time I have computers available through the school that I can send email and access things that I need to access.

If you hear a loud banging....just know it is me....banging my head on the wall..... Sheesh.