Spanish Steps

This is one of the best hikes, aside from Shark's Hole, that I've been able to take on Guam. Ropes and rocks consisted of most of the hike, and then easy walks through the jungle littered with fallen coconuts and mosquitos brought us to one of the places on Guam that I've dreampt of going to since I moved here. Since this is on the Navy base, I had slim hopes of being able to do this hike until I met some awesome military friends who arranged everything. Friends Lynn and Joyce came along with us and also had an amazing time. I can't wait to do it again.

Blessings of all kinds

This Thanksgiving, my friend Delight brought me a package that he forgot he had in his car from the last post office run. I received many c.d.s from my friend Angie and her family who are currently in Texas. A while ago, I put out a call for some good Christian c.d.s and she was the only one who responded. Of these, I received the new Mat Kearney c.d. and the Kutless c.d. and other awesome ones, like Matthew West, Group One Crew, Switchfoot, Toby Mac, and I think one more? My friends were excited about these, too. Now, I have some positive music to listen to when I'm driving. The radio stations here are kinda....eh, and there's no Air 1. Now, I can choose between mainstream and Christian. Sweet!

Thanks Angie!!

STUCO carwash

Our Student Body had a fundraising carwash at the Lutheran Church of Guam (LCG) this past Saturday. I'd have to say that not only was it a blast, but a pretty big success. They had a professional looking operation of people directing cars in, a team washing them, then a tent set up to dry and vacuum.

I got the Jeep washed and vacuumed as it needed it badly. We had spilled peanuts and other snacks on the inside, plus lots of sand and grass, and then the outside was a filthy dusty mess from all of our recent adventures. It looked great after and still does!








It was a lot bigger than I imagined it to be- almost every student from campus, even some commuters, came down to help out. Jayleen and some of the girls cooked us delicious chicken and rice (local favorite), and we got to take some small breaks on the beach out back.

The only thing I did to help was to hang out on the side of the road trying to cheer people into the parking lot. We had signs held up, dancing, jumping, and all kinds of crazy things. Rob wasn't sure whether that was attracting customers or scaring them away. Whatever it did, we had a great time doing it.














After we all cleaned up, some of our friends headed down to one of my favorite beaches to swim while the sun was setting. It was a great way to end a long day of hard work. I'm really proud of our students, and blessed to have some amazing friends here. I can't wait to see what we do next as a community.

Ritidian Point

This past Monday, my friends Alepo, Leeman, and I went to explore a nature preserve on the northernmost part of the island. We wanted to get off campus to hang out, and none of us had been there before, so it was a pretty cool experience for all of us. The drive was a lot longer than we expected, but the views were awesome. I'm pretty excited that we saw a pig cross the road, but that's just 'cuz I'm new out here.

After a hike to the ocean, we finally got to just relax.

Leeman brought his guitar, but it was too windy to play, so we just sat on a slab of cement that probably had to do with the military at some point. They told me the story of how they met, which is always interesting to hear both great sides at the same time. Alepo has an awesome sense of humor and she's pretty animated. She also has a lot of great insight and generally good vibes. Leeman can be wise, silly, and sarcastic all at the same time. Something that's cool about them, and I hope it's not offensive to them that I'm writing this, is that they come from two different islands. Leeman's from Palau, and Alepo is from Chuuk. The different cultures, expectations, and languages don't seem to matter to them nor get in the way of the relationship. I think that's awesome, seeing as half the time I'm worried about whether or not something's appropriate for someone else's culture, or whether or not I'm offending anyone. I think they might have worked out a lot of these kinks, and that's going to be a blessing for me. When I'm with Leeman and Alepo, I get a good Christian perspective without a lot of cultural hangups- or, I get a few ways to look at things. It's hard to explain, but these two are like family to me out here, and it's really cool to be able to have time away with them. I'm totally looking forward to whatever we get to do next :)

Community Groups

Community Group #2, as in the group I'm in with Melissa, Iotaka, Daisy, and other awesome people, had a pool party at my place this past Sunday night. Thanks, Mels, for feeding us our main course!

We had a great time with students and faculty at PIU- mostly due to us having free reign in pushing anyone and everyone into the pool. Some lessons we learned included: how to make an "H" in sign language, that all one needs to do for a successful backflip is to throw their feet over their head, and that if you're standing near the pool, you're going in.

Why I need support on Guam

One of the reasons is this: (look at the price
And, look what the Post Office and customs did to my box when my friends tried to send me goodies from back home:

Thankfully, some staff and students helped me clean up the mess that the rice milk made while the tea bags were steeping in it in various post offices between CA and Hawaii.

So, my lesson is this: unless it is a certain item that I absolutely, positively, cannot get out here (like from Trader Joe's) I won't be asking for it- I'll learn to live without it, and learn to pay 3x the price for rice milk. Olek.

3 Prayers Answered

I want to give you a little list of some of the many prayers God has answered for me- here ya go:

- Guam itself is an answer to a prayer. When I knew I wasn't moving to Thailand, I prayed to God for a sign for where overseas I should be going. Within a week, as I was looking up the brown tree snake on wikipedia, I saw a link for PIU (which was then PIBC) which happened to be on the same island as the brown tree snake. I emailed PIBC, they emailed me back, and the rest is history.

-When I started to communicate with Steve about what I'd need to raise funds for, I tried really hard to convince him that I didn't need a car. Then, when I lost that fight (and thank goodness I did...it would be very difficult here...) I prayed for a Jeep. Now, I am driving a Jeep.

- The support issues, well, they're all in good places right now. I'm making my ends meet with the support I have, which is a huge blessing, and my church is finally on board with us here at PIU. I've been praying about this for such a long time, and it's so cool that it all happened- in God's timing. This too was a huge answered prayer. Amen :)

a roach is a roach....

A roach crawled up the drain in our bathroom some time between this morning and last night. This is the first one I've really had to "deal with." (The first time I ever had to deal with one, I blogged about it here) I was trying to be passive aggressive about it and not clean it up, since my roommates don't seem to be as grossed out as I am, but after a long day out, when I got home it was still there. I showed Laura, and she made me clean it up as she took pictures. I tried to fight having to clean it up, but as she said, I am in Guam and I need to learn how to deal with these things. So, anyway, one would think that if a bug was laying on its back for an entire day, it would be a dead bug, right? Well, not a roach. It started to move its legs around all crazy-like, so I had to find bug spray. I think I knocked it out enough to bag it. This was the grossest thing I've done in a while- but like I say, "do one thing a day that challenges you or scares you." I need to change my motto- but it won't matter here in the islands. These bugs and I, well, we share the same space.

Inarajan Pools

Some of the girls from PIU; Grace, Ceci, Molly, Jaynee, and I went to Inarajan pools for a late afternoon outing. We started off by swinging off of the rope swing and jumping off of a tower into the natural salt water pool, or as my roommate affectionately calls it, the mud hole. Ok, there's a little mud and moss, but it's not bad. I don't like to touch the ground but if you jump into the middle, it's all good.

After we all had a few jumps, the girls swam into a tunnel while I went over it. The current was pushing the water through pretty fast but they hung on while I took pictures.

Like moss in the water, I'm not a fan of small spaces, but they didn't seem to mind.

I had no idea how adventerous these girls were until I saw them all climb up on these random cement steps. They had to climb about six feet of rocks, grab onto some branches, and lift themselves up there. I was stoked to follow them up, where the views of the pools and ocean were amazing. I have a lot to learn here and catch up on, because I had to do all this in my slippers (sandals) while they were mostly barefoot.

After we all made it down from the steps, we swam over into the pool that has the ocean breaking into it. At first I couldn't swim into it because of the rip tide, but Ceci (left) helped me while Grace (right) and Molly climbed up on some other rocks in this pool, again...barefoot. When I was trying to swim out, another rip tide kept pulling me back in. Finally, a huge wave crashed into the pool and pushed us all out. That had to have been one of the funniest parts of our trip- imagine four girls being pushed out of a pool, screaming. (We were probably screaming. I know I was too busy trying to not get cut by all of the coral.)

From the outer pools, a few of us swam and climbed our way to where Jaynee was, sitting on top of a coral thing (thing? a coral hill thing...I don't know what it would be called) where we stayed as the sun was setting. It was such a peaceful end to our afternoon at the pools.

I love being able to hang out with the girls while doing fun things that the island has to offer. I think that just getting out in nature and being active is a great way to really get to know someone, while also enjoying all of the beautiful (not to mention free) resources that are gifted to us. I can't wait to experience more adventures like this. I know that I had a great time, and that we have some awesome, adventerous girls at PIU.

Reef Walking

Here's a copy of an email my roommate sent to her friends back in the states about a little adventure we had. Enjoy-

It's 6 am and Jen (my roommate) and I just got back from reef walking. We found five humpbacks and two other little cowries. It was so much fun to take someone who's never been before. She's quite the adventurer and we had lots of fun. I looked at the tide chart and it showed a l0w tide at 3 am. I took her to the spot that we went to last time. I now know why it's important to wait for a negative tide. :) It was a rough intro to reef walking but I was able to teach her a lot of good techniques for bracing yourself when the big waves come and demonstrate some things you shouldn't do while reef walking. It was fun to spot a shell, point her in the right direction and then let her find it for herself. I spotted one shell and told her the area it was in and let her hop down in after it. I stayed up and watched the waves ( one of us usually played watchman and would yell when a big wave was coming so the other one could stand up and brace themselves) and she came up with a completely different shell than the one I'd seen. We scored two off that one! At one point I started getting nervous that I kept her up most of the night and then because the tide wasn't low enough that we'd go home skunked but thankfully that didn't happen! When we got down to the channel where we walk back up to the cars the waves were pretty rough so I decided we'd walk up on the opposite side than where we did when I was with you two. We got less than half way up when I realized that there was no trail and we really needed to go back out and cross over. I looked back at the waves and thought we might be in trouble. I didn't want to walk all the way back the other way so I told her we'd wait for the worst of the waves to go by and then we'd make a quick crossing. We were standing on a rock waiting for the worst to pass when all the sudden a wave swept her off and pushed her back. I felt terrible! Here I'd brought my roommate out (she's only been on island a few months) in the middle of the night and I was getting her all banged up on the rocks. Thankfully she was being pushed inland and not drug out. I yelled for her (like that really does any good) and tried to grab her unsuccessfully. She was able to get up and now has a few (very cool) battle scars along with her pretty shells to show for our adventure. Anyway, you'll be happy to know that we did make it across and home safely. She loved our adventure scraps and all. We're going again the beginning of Dec when there's actually a negative tide. I think she might be surprised how much easier it is when you're not getting banged around by waves.


Isn't this awesome? I had a blast...even through the cuts and scrapes. I am so glad I have an adventerous roommate who lives dangerously, but I mean, not that dangerously...but ok she does some crazy stuff. It goes perfectly with what I like to remember for myself..."do one new thing a day that challenges you" whether it be mentally, emotionally, or physically. The opportunities don't always arise but when they do, I have to go for them.

Welcoming Daniel

My (and everyone else at PIU's) friend Kalvin was baptized this past Sunday at Ypao beach by our friend and UOG ministry leader Austin (left). The day couldn't have been more beautiful. We started off in prayer, some worship, and then made our way to the ocean. We even had someone who was not part of our group checking things out and wishing us blessings as we were all together in fellowship. It was awesome to see that there were so many blessings happening around us.

Kalvin took on the spiritual and new name of Daniel, after his grandfather, with this rebirth. He is such a great example for the students and staff in his walk with Christ, and I am blessed to know him and work in ministry together. Congratulations and blessings to you, Daniel- may God bless you, encourage you, and keep you always.


"I baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." Mark 1:8