What's "normal" anyway?

I had someone recently ask me what a normal week

was like here for me and Tim. I had to think about that
a bit - what is "normal" anyway? However, since we take
our camera everywhere, I thought I'd give you a "tour"
through this past week in photos and captions! The week
started last Saturday when we had a fellowship on campus with
a group of short-term missionaries from Germany.

Our students gathered to sing to the German team as a farewell and
thank you for all their hard work down on our Chuuk campus. Here are the student representatives of the eleven nationalities from our student body that were present for the evening;
each person greeted and thanked the German team
in his or her "home" language. It was very moving!

The girls from Chuuk wore their beautiful, colorful "mumus" and sang a lovely song in Chuukese. We also have very talented musicians on campus who accompanied the singing with an electric keyboard. As the evening progressed, Tim and Brad had a little cleanup to do, so they decided to employ our campus' manual trash compacter. (It's okay; no one was hurt in the process!)

The sun began to set; we ate dinner (potluck, of course!) and played some games. Melissa, Joyce, Leah and I (not pictured; sorry!) watched from the sidelines. Tim took part in a relay

race. Apparently, this was all found fairly amusing by little Amelia!

The next evening (Sunday), we had our monthly PIBC faculty and staff potluck and prayer meeting. The Germans had not left yet, so they joined us. We had a fun evening of food, fellowship, prayer and worshiped together in song. We sang mostly in English, but the German missionaries shared a couple of songs in German. God's family is universal! The Lord understood every word!

Monday arrived and we'd already had a pretty full weekend; I had a lot of grading to do and midterms are coming up, so I spent a lot of time Monday and Tuesday in my office . . . when I wasn't busy teaching. I share office space with Mary who teaches the TESL classes and Christel C. who teaches math: this is the General Education department this semester! :-)

"It was a dark and stormy night . . . " Wednesday night found us at our book discussion group. About thirteen of us are reading through C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and this week we had our first meeting to discuss Lewis' defense of the faith. It was going well until a heavy storm hit the island. We were meeting in the church's parsonage which faces the beach - the home's living space is fronted toward the ocean with about four sets of wide sliding glass doors . . . which promptly began to leak . . . severely leak! Water was literally pouring in through the sliding glass door's tracks! Jeff (pastor) went outside to close the typhoon shutters which helped to stem the flow of the river gushing in. Meanwhile, everyone pitched in to mop up the water with whatever we could find. Two mops, twenty bath towels, several buckets and bowls later (and several spin cycles so we could re-use the towels), we had gotten the mess under control. Such is life on Guam! We finished the evening with dessert and our final discussion comments!




We finished off the week with our work on campus by day;
Thursday night was music rehearsal (I'll have to get a photo
of this to post at some point) and today we wrapped up the
week with student-led chapel. Some of you remember
Happiness, who was in the states over summer. He did an
excellent job presenting a short sermon, reminding us of
God's faithfulness when we pursue Him persistently and
with a whole heart. Thanks for your ongoing support of this
ministry; may God bless your weekend and the coming
week! Check in with us again next week for more news.
Blessings!
In His great love, Melody and Tim