We returned the first week in January from visiting family and friends in Illinois for 3 wks.  What an amazing memorable time talking with friends and spending quality time with family.  We got out of town just in time though, since the temperature had been unseasonably warm while we were there, and dropped to 20 degrees the day we left.  We did not realize how much our joints and overall wellbeing enjoyed the warmer temperatures in Kona.

We arrived back just as the January quarter at the Univ of the Nations was getting in full swing.  There were about 400 students from around the world and now the April quarter has begun with about the same number.  It is exciting to see the passion in these students as they go through the intensive 3- month modular classes in the seven colleges and then see them leave for their 2 month practical outreaches in many nations.  Please enjoy this link to see a variety of the ministries here at the University.  https://youtu.be/Xq86vJu-1mw

Jim has had more help the past two quarters in maintenance with a great group of volunteers from many different nations who came to fill the many support ministries on campus in grounds, maintenance, kitchen, hospitality, learning center & preschool helpers, and construction workers for the many building & rehab projects around campus.  Jim is amazing in his trouble shooting skills and enjoys the challenge of problem solving problems all over campus.  Recently he fixed a bunch of lights that involved getting up in a basket.  It made me nervous as I watched from my office but he was enjoying the experience.  Last week he had a very important machine that was needed for a project that broke.  A replacement machine was not available on the island and neither were parts.  As he prayed about it, the Lord showed him two wires that had broken and the cause for the problem.  It was a huge hallelujah moment in maintenance.

I had an amazing conversation a few weeks ago with two young girls, one from Canada and the other from Denmark, who had paid their own way to come and volunteer on the campus for 3 months.  They spent 5 days a week, about 7 hours a day, raking leaves, picking up palm leaves, and doing other landscape projects. The volunteer program here feeds and houses them and on the weekends they enjoy the island.  I was able to share with them that they were making an investment in God’s economy that pays greater eternal rewards and every team that goes out of this place, these young girls were sharing in the work done in all the nations where the students go because they had come and invested their time and energy in this  missionary sending organization.  They had huge tears in their eyes and had never thought about that.

I continue to oversee the Campus Clinic .  My responsibilities are to coordinate the schedule for clinic hours based on the availability of our volunteer MDs.  I serve with some amazing staff. Neneng Loseo from the Philippines is my teammate.   Recently, a wonderful RN from Korea, Kay Ro, came for 3 months and volunteered. We serve the students, staff, and volunteers for free who come for treatment of a variety of injuries such as scrapes from lava rock, sea urchin stings, sprains, etc.

We do a lot of patient teaching on how to stay hydrated in this very warm climate. At the end of each quarter we assist schools with immunizations for their overseas outreaches.  Below is a picture of Dr. Hoon Park, one of our wonderful volunteer MDs, he recently celebrated a birthday and another of our MDs, Dr. Jennifer Choi, made him a special Korean dessert.

Sherry/Neneng/Kay

Dr Hoon Park/Dr. Jennifer Choi

In the past few weeks I have had a health challenge.  I got a little cut at the beach that became infected and I ended up in the hospital with a severe blood infection that required IV antibiotics two different times for a total of 8 days.  I am still on oral antibiotics for another week or two.  I have not felt so weak in years.  It really took the wind out of my sails.  Would appreciate your continued prayers for this.

We have been here with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) at the University of the Nations in Kona for over a year and have had time to assess our budget living on our social security. YWAM is a faith-based volunteer organization where every person from the founder, Loren Cunningham, himself to the short -term missionary is responsible to raise their own support.  As we have prayed, we feel the Lord has challenged us to deal with our pride and to reach out and ask people to pray about partnering with us. He showed us that we are investing our time and energy to be part of this organization and we need to allow people to invest seed in this good soil.  We are asking the Lord for a $1000 more per month to help with expenses and additional funds for us to also invest seed as He leads us.

If you would like to support financially either though monthly donations or a one time gift simply visit the following link   http://www.uofnkona.edu Click on donate under picture. To donate online through paypal just search James Galloway in search missionary.

To donate by check click on Support Our Missionaries by check.  Follow the instructions and make check payable to University of the Nations Kona and enclose a note for James Galloway /Mission Account # 6319.   All donations to us are now TAX DEDUCTIBLE.

We pray a blessing on each of you and would love to hear from you.  We plan on being in Illinois for about 3 weeks in June for our grandson, Austin’s wedding.  We look forward to seeing some of you in person.

With much love

Jim & Sherry

Had a great visit with our dau, Randi, who came in March. She enjoyed seeing our daily visitors geckos and chickens and she got to experience “cow days” when the cows up the mountain are let loose to roam in the pastures near our place.

Our friendly geckos

The hens visit daily

Time for an update from Kailua Kona Hawaii

We are doing well and continue to serve the campus at University of the Nations.  We enjoy waking up to cool breeze up the mountain and seeing the lush foliage all around us and the rooster crowing in the mornings. There are so many sights and sounds that just put a smile on our faces as we drive to campus each morning to be there by 6:30.  The neighbor has recently tied up his two ponies by the road and the white birds love hanging around them.  They also are all around the cows on "cow days".  We are posting some of our recent pics.  Jim is still doing a lot of renovation of dorm rooms, general repairs in current dorms, and overall preventive maintenance all over campus.  (See pic) Unfortunately, his golf cart has not been running and we need real prayer for that issue. If anyone wants to donate money for one let us know.

I am busy in the clinic. We are doing a lot of nurse triage since we are short on volunteer MDs for a couple of months.  I work with a wonderful Filopino nurse, Neneng.  We make such a good team.  (See picture)

We recently sold our PT Cruiser and purchased a used Hyundai Tuscon which is 4 WD that has more room for people, luggage, and tools and seemed to be more practical for our needs living here.  (See pic)

It's great having Alyssa here for her school. She has 5-7 am work duty in the kitchen so Jim sees her M-F.  We get to see her at the Thurs nite service (see pic) and we take her and her friends to Walmart occas.  She is doing well. Very busy with her class and activities.  She is looking forward to her overseas outreach to Asia (not sure we can disclose location but keep her and her team in prayer !!)  We will probably get to spend Thanksgiving together. 

We have had an outbreak of Dengue Fever here on the Big Island and have about 25 cases.  This is spread by mosquitos and not person to person.  The Health Dept is having everyone be aggressive with protection from mosquito bites and dealing with standing water etc.  Be praying for this.

We love being here and meeting so many amazing people. Young people, older people and families with small children that are feeling called to go live in remote places overseas to love and reach people with the good news of Jesus' love for them.  There are so many technological advances that are being developed here for sharing the Bible in so many languages and being able to take the "Jesus" film and show it in villages with a solar backpack.  It is crazy to see all the amazing things God is doing on this campus.  We feel so privileged to be a part of it.

We are planning a trip back to the St. Louis area from 12/9-1/5   We are looking to connect with people and work on raising about $1000/month missionary support.  Life is more expensive here for basic needs and we are finding that our monthly SS does not cover all of it. Join with us in prayer as we seek the Lord for that need. We are now official self employed missionaries with the University and anyone who gives money to us will receive a tax deduction.  

We also are looking forward to seeing our granddaughter, Brittany and her husband Joe, who are going to be home from Japan for Christmas. 

Until next time  Blessings to all of you who care for us and pray for us.  

Jim & Sherry

Time to catch up About a week and a half ago, we moved off campus to a small one bedroom, one bath duplex up the mountain from the Univ of the Nations campus. We are 6 miles and about 10-15 min away. No one on staff gets paid. Everyone actually pays to serve here except the volunteers who come for a few months at a time. We were praying about moving since more rooms were going to be needed for fall and winter semesters. We became aware of the front half of this duplex coming available and God opened the door for us to be accepted to rent it. Jim and I both work 5 days a week on campus and the rooms are not air conditioned and we were feeling the "heat" more and more. Jim drinks about 4 quarts of gatorade a day. He's so excited to have his new "used" maintenance golf cart and that will help alot. We are grateful for the cooler nites up the mountain for sleeping. It goes down to 63-65 degrees at nite and by the time we reach the campus near the ocean, it's 78 degrees and gets to 86 or 90. We were able to buy some cute used furniture from Habitat for Humanity and a couch from Craigslist. Jim is looking forward to being able to do some gardening in a large area the landlord said was his to do what he wanted. There are about 200 coffee trees on the property along with banana, mango, lemons, and breadfruit. Next door as we drive down the road there are chickens, goats, some ponies, and 3-4 days out of the month, there are about 35 cows that are released to graze on some of the pastureland our road goes through. On those days, we use a code to go through a cow gate so, technically, we say we live in a "gated" community. On campus, Jim continues to repair and remodel dorm rooms and offices. He is helping hang a new sign at the Urgent Care and put up a cell phone signal booster on the roof. I am learning more of the admin side of running the campus clinic and scanning records into the electronic medical record and being nurse on call for triage. We have clinic 3 days a week and myself and another nurse work with doctors who volunteers their time. Jim and I attend Mokuikaua Church in Kona. Sunday nite we start a DVD series for 13 weeks called the "Truth Project" from Focus on the Family. We are helping to lead discussion groups afterwards to challenge all of us to live by a Biblical Worldview. Our down time is spent reading, going to the Kona pool, and having friends over for game nights. We are looking forward to Alyssa coming at the end of September to do a 6 month school here at the Univ. Wow it was so sunny most of today and now it is clouding up and getting ready to rain again. These tropical storms are causing rain almost daily and the campus is doing some sandbagging around some of the bldgs due to the gushing water in the outside drains. We will close this chapter for now, until next time. Keep us in your prayers. Jim & Sherry

Our kids lives were changed in three short years with YWAM

Andrew got to go to Manila with a group of teens (that's him with no shirt on the right) They built a daycare/classroom behind the team house about 3 blocks from the garbage dump where we were working.

It was so hot in Manila and Randi slept under a mosquito net to keep out all kinds of flying insects.  She and I travelled for 7 weeks together without Jim and the boys.  Lots of good memories.

Andrew won 32 Big Macs one day in a bicycle rodeo in Kailua Kona.  Tony was busy with friends going boogie boarding in the ocean.  

All of the kids were real troopers traveling with the team for long hours and huge lines in the airports with all our supplies.  

Randi enjoyed working in the daycare taking care of babies during the day.  She would work hard getting her school work done ahead of time so she would be ready when the children were brought to our team house for the day.

Tony would take his own money and buy metal cans of water to let the kids take quick sponge baths.

Greetings from Hawaii 2015 We have started a new blog since we moved back to Hawaii after many years. We wanted to give a little BACKGROUND INFO for those who don't know why we would consider coming here after all these years. BLAST FROM THE PAST 1983 photo of the Galloway family when we left St. Louis to go through a 3 month discipleship training school called Crossroads DTS with an interdenominational missionary organization called Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in Kailua Kona HI on the Big Island. We, as a family, responded to a call from the Lord to move here and be full time missionaries. We were here for 3 years. Jim worked in maintenance and I managed the kitchen and planned menus for about 450 people per day and trained volunteer kitchen help and student work crews. A year later, Jim prayed and felt that I was to take the Intro to Primary Healthcare School for 3 months and then our family went to Manila, Philippines where we helped on a large garbage dump called Smokey Mountain. We also started a daycare center in our rented team house and our children helped in that, as well, as helping with clinics that we held in the actual squatter area.