And the next news?

Vanuatu didn't occupy the top slot in the global headlines for long, but Cyclone Pam's wreckage and aftermath is of course inescapable for those affected. PTC has organised a College appeal in consultation with families from the islands, including parts of Kiribati and Tuvalu. There is huge appreciation of solidarity and aid from further afield - thank you if you're able. The Methodist Church in Britain's development arm All We Can has an emergency appeal if you'd like to respond that way.

Meanwhile back at base this week, we welcomed Dr Andrew Thornley to the Education by Extension office to ''sign off', as it were, the Bachelor of Divinity module that he wrote and that I've been editing on 20th Century Pacific Church history. It's now all ready to go - and we praise God for that! Dr Thornley in the past taught at both Davuilevu, the Methodist Theological College in Fiji, and here at the Pacific Theological College and is well known in these parts, not least because of his commitment to reviving and reprinting the first ever Bible produced in the iTaukei (Fijian) language. A 2012 Fiji Times report - of which you can read the full text here - notes the considerable achievement.

The effort was undertaken by two very distinguished Fijian Methodism scholars of late, the Doctor Andrew Thornley and Tauga Vulaono. Between the two, they have published four books since 2000, on the lives of early English missionaries as well as a book on the modern history of the iTaukei in the pre and post Christian era. The first iTaukei bible was translated directly from Greek, the original language of the Bible, to the Bauan dialect by the Reverend John Hunt or Jone Oniti, as he was known to the Fijians back then. Hunt was credited with the translation because he did much of the work but the work to translate the Bible into the iTaukei form was previously taken up by several other missionaries including Thomas Jagger, William Cross, David Cargill, James Calvert, Richard Lacey, Thomas Williams and many more.

(We'll leave for discussion at a later date, perhaps, the phrase '...Greek, the original language of the Bible...') 

The Pacific Church History course owes a great deal to a textbook by the late Dr Charles Forman, The Island Churches of the South Pacific, and although it's officially out of print, PTCEE was given permission to reprint it by the author himself not long before his death. Credit and thanks for obtaining this permission must go to Deidre Madden, PTCEE Director until November 2013. Here are, from the left, myself, Dr Andrew Thornley and PTCEE's administrator Salome celebrating the course's completion. 

The 'task within the task' of being PTCEE Director is to keep all these new or revised BD courses rolling off the press. Next up for editing - ethics! There's a lot of goggle-eyed, computer-screen work in this slice of ministry it has to be said - a musing rather than a complaint. What we're really keen to do though - with no disrespect whatsoever intended to Dr Thornley and others - is to encourage a far richer ethnic mix of course writers from across Oceania. There ARE indigenous, Pacific theologians, historians, Biblical scholars, ministry specialists etc around us - they're just not writing for PTCEE at the moment. Mmm... Some Pacific pestering called for maybe...

A big banner went up at the University of the South Pacific 'round the corner. I saw it as I got off the jolly green bus.....

....and thought, 'Oh yes, I'm up for that!' So Fragrance, my lovely new neighbour and I went along. She's the one on the far right here - Mum to Jeffy and Julia and wife to Rayappan. 

Schools from across Fiji had been invited to submit poems, videos, artwork etc on the theme and the various winners were presented with awards. You can see some of them on the Citizen's Constitutional Forum Facebook page.

Here, for example, are students from St Joseph's receiving awards for their photo and video entries. Methodists in Britain who've been hanging around for too many years (like yours truly...) may well recognise CCF's Director the Revd Akuila Yabaki who's a former Asia-Pacific regional co-ordinator from our World Church team It''s been good to link up with him again since being in Suva.

Do take a minute to click on this CCF video and pause with the picture below. Our prayer, as ever, is for the world to reconsider, repent and recommit.