Service
Manila, Philippines (January 2006)
During January 2006 members of the computer science department traveled to Manila,
Philippines to participate in a class entitled “Seminar in International Development”.
The underling purpose of this course is to provide an opportunity for students to
productively engage their discipline in an international setting. The group included
seven MVNU students and three alumni, Tim Myatt (’81 and MVNU director of network computing),
Ty Offineer (’90), and John Dubusky (’02), and was led by Dr. James Skon, Professor of Computer Science.

While in Manila, the team participated in three main projects. The first was to
build a complete gigabit optical network backbone for the Asia Pacific Nazarene Seminary
(APNTS). APNTS is a graduate theological school, preparing men and women for service in
ministry. Because APNTS charges very little tuition in order to provide an affordable
education for students, very little funding has been available for computer networking needs.
When Dr. Kasper and Dr. Skon visited Manila in the summer of 2005 to assess possible projects,
they found that the existing network was built out of aging low-end home networking equipment,
with indoor type network cables running in broken conduits between the many campus buildings.
Stories abounded of almost daily network outages, blown equipment from lightning strikes, and infected computers.
The school needed a fast, reliable, network, with an enterprise class firewall, file server, and core router.
During the fall, the computer science department received donations of a firewall and RAID
server being retired from service at MVNU. In addition, Gordon College donated a 64 port gigabit
core router and 6 24 port managed network switches.
While there in January, Tim Myatt led a team of students and alumni in the task of building
a new backbone based on the equipment the team brought. This included rebuilding the campus
server room from the ground up. The new network was interconnected with a newly installed fiber
optic backbone, providing reliable gigabit speed connections among all major buildings.
The network included the firewall for security, and a VLAN segmented organization for manageability.
Tim, as project leader, focused on truly combining learning with service. T.J. Seabrooks, a senior
CS major said “the students weren’t just there to be helpers but were learning something and truly
doing the work. Tim was the helper, we did all the work.”
While this work proceeded at APNTS, Dr. Skon worked with another team at the Nazarene Asia
Pacific Regional Office. Here they worked with MVNU Alumnus Kevin Brunk (’88), currently the
business manager for the regional office in Manila, to set up a new VPN to allow for remote
computer access and a voice over IP system to allow the use of the internet for phone calls
across the region and with the US.
Three three female students spend some amazing time working with children at the New Faith
Family Children’s Home in Manila. The orphanage, which houses 25 children, was started only
a year ago by Jeff Long, a administrator at Faith Academy (a Manila school for missionary children).
Jeff said that the idea for starting an orphanage came when his middle school daughter asked
him why they couldn’t do more to help the over 200,000 homeless street children living, on their
own, in Manila. The orphanage takes the children, ranging in age from new born (abandoned at birth)
to 13 years old. They nurse them back to heath (more are malnourished), get their there teeth fixed,
and enroll them in a Christian school. “The highlight of the trip for me working with the Filipino
kids, both at the orphanage and the street kids. At first it was so overwhelming to be with so many
kids who came from such horrible backgrounds but it turned out to be such a blessing. They showed
such happiness and joy for life even though they didn't have anything. They had some amazing testimonies
and it really allowed me to reflect back on my own faith and learn from kids who were half my age” says
Katie Vipperman, an exercise studies junior.
In addition to these major projects, the team had many other ministry opportunities, as well
as a chance to interact with Filipinos, in churches, at the seminary, and on the streets. They
also toured Manila, and visiting two other nearby islands. Penny Styers, an exercise studies
junior, says she will miss “FRESH pineapple milkshakes and the kids at the orphanage” most.
Tim Myatt sums up the real nature and purpose of J-term travel courses with “I saw in the
lives of the student’s not only great skills, but so much Kingdom potential.”
Papua New Guinea (January 2001)
In January 2001, members of the MVNU Computer Science Department participated
in the course entitled "Seminar in International Development."
The CS team, lead by Dr. Jim Skon, computer science professor, built and
installed a 40-node wireless network at the Kudjip Nazarene mission hospital
in the Western Highland Plains of Papua New Guinea.

During the 18 months leading up to the trip, students in Dr. Skon's Software
Engineering course met with Dr. Jim Radcliff, the chief surgeon at the
Nazarene hospital and MVNU alumnus, to design a database system to manage
the inpatient records for the 100-bed hospital. During the summer prior
to the trip, Greg Reynolds, then a computer science junior at MVNC, was
funded through grant money to implement the database system. The resulting
client/server system, written in C++, used a web-based interface to allow
a high level of client portability. The database itself resided on a Linux
server using the PostgreSQL database software.
On January 2, 2001, 17 students departed for PNG with 11 computers, six
network hubs, thousands of network cables and five wireless bridges and
antennas. Students worked to internally network five separate buildings
with Ethernet (including the 30 existing computers). Then the five buildings
were linked via wireless bridges. The Linux server, in the main hospital
building, was set up as a file server, and e-mail server, and a PPP dialup
server (for access from mission homes), in addition to its use as the
database server. Students worked during the last week to train hospital
personnel on system use and maintenance.

Students also experienced many church, sightseeing, and cultural events,
including a traditional outdoor feast, a hike up into the rain-forested
mountains, and a traditional festival. Several daring pre-medical students
observed and even assisted in surgery!