Greg Steward’s Miscellanies

FOCUS held its annual Christmas Banquet on December 7, 2007. Once again we were hosted by Greater Portland Bible Church. There were approximately 300 in attendance including FOCUS staff and associates, kitchen crew, table hosts, and international students and scholars. The evening included a turkey dinner, “The Christmas Event” as enacted by internationals, the FOCUS Gospel Choir, and the audience-participation rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Please enjoy a tasty serving below! Thanks to all who made this possible!

(You can also view the individual photos.)

On June 7, 2007, FOCUS was privileged to meet Dr. Azharul Islam, Vice-Chancellor, and Abu Reza Nadwi, Associate Professor, Department of Da’wah and Islamic Studies, both at International Islamic University Chittagong in Bangladesh. They were at Portland State University to talk about exchange programs with PSU and several universities in Bangladesh.

They had three days of meetings June 5-7 at PSU, and on Thursday evening FOCUS hosted them for a reception at John and Pauline Garney’s home. They were accompanied by Rehman Ashraf and Sazzad Hossain, both doctoral candidates at PSU. Sazzad was helping to coordinate their visit at PSU and was eager for the visitors to meet some of the FOCUS community.

I meet them at PSU around 4:30 and we visited the Rose Garden in Washington Park and then did a brief tour of NW Portland. Then we drove to the Garney’s where we had dinner. After dinner and dessert, we had a brief time to share about FOCUS and what FOCUS has to offer international students and scholars who come to PSU to study and do research.

Also in attendence were FOCUS staff and volunteers Ron Riesinger, Andy and Jooae Peloquin, myself (Greg Steward), Carol Starr, Karen Mundt, Bill and Janice Fry and their homestay, Celine from Taiwan, Maarten Schreuder, and Garney’s son, James.

For the 2006 tax year (that is, returns due April 17, 2007), FOCUS conducted three tax workshops at Portland State University for international students and scholars. These were held on three consecutive Tuesdays beginning March 27 .

In the past, students just showed up with their documents (such as W-2’s) and they filled out the forms and then we helped them with the financial parts. This year we tried something different. We advertised that they should fill out the forms ahead of time using a tax help website that I put together to given them assistance. They could then bring the (mostly) completed forms for review. Of the 195 that came to our workshops, very few did that.

We had twelve volunteers for the tax workshops this year. Gary Ferrill, recently retired from the IRS, had previously provided the training for our volunteers. It was great to have his expertise on hand at all three sessions. In addition to Gary and me, Kay Anderson and Burt Jarvis were also present at all three workshops.

Autumn Bauwens assisted me with “triage” (welcoming the students and getting them started with filling out their forms). Helping with one or more workshops were Jim Saunders, Fred Wagner, Wilbur Wood, and first-timers John Garney, Dean Rowley, Georgia Dan, Laura Hashimoto.

We had a great team of volunteers this year.

Below is a preliminary count (by country) of who came to our workshops.

1 Burkina Faso
1 Canada
27 China
1 Columbia
2 Costa Rica
2 Ecuador
2 England
2 France
4 Germany
2 Hong Kong
74 India
2 Indonesia
22 Japan
1 Kazakhstan
14 Korea
2 Malaysia
2 Mexico
1 Morocco
2 Myanmar
2 Nepal
2 Pakistan
1 Poland
2 Russia
2 Saudi Arabia
1 Spain
1 Sri Lanka
1 Sweden
2 Taiwan
5 Thailand
2 Tiawan
2 Turkey
1 Uganda
1 Venezuala
6 Vietnam
195 Grand Total