I just finished reading an article on water that stated "water has been ranked by experts as second only to oxygen as essential for life". There were many interesting statistics noted such as the human body is from 55-75% water. 2/3 thirds of your weight is water. You need 2 1/2 quarts of water per day to be healthy. Some of the problems the article listed that could be caused by drinking too little water were: asthma, allergies, hypertension, excess body weight and even some emotional problems. Does that make you thirsty? Isn't it interesting that our general well being, physically speaking, is linked to drinking water. What a concept!
Have you ever been thirsty? I remember many years when the water tower in Tucumcari, New Mexico fell over. That effectively shut down the water supply for our little town. I don't normally have a great desire for water, but somehow the lack of availability made me more thirsty than any other day in my life. I truly longed for a cool drink of water. It took a disaster to make me realize how wonderful and refreshing a drink of water could be.
Asia consists of 48 countries in our world. There are over 6 billion souls living on our planet and over 4 billion of them live in Asia. Talk about a crowd! Most of these precious souls have never heard the Gospel of Jesus. What are we do do? Give up? Or re-double our efforts. Sunset currently has 9 schools in Asia. Four of them are in the Philippines. The others are located in Seoul, S. Korea, Singapore, Bangkok, Thailand, Batam, Indonesia, and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We have over 130 students studying in our schools. That is great but what about the 4.2 billion souls?
SIBI’s schools in Asia have really progressed over the past few years. In 2003 we had only one school (Batam, Indonesia). Today we have nine schools with the possibility of two more coming on line before the end of the year. Things are coming together and we praise God for His blessings.
Our team of workers in Singapore has now grown to two families. Dr. Cook serves as Resident Dean of the Singapore school and Tom Goracke serves as Dean of students.
Dr. Charles Cook and his wife, Tamara, arrived in Singapore a couple of months ago. Tom, Nancy and children arrived last month. With both men and their families on the field, we can now expect the school in Singapore to develop quickly. Several courses have already been taught with more coming on a regular basis. Right now Charles Cook is teaching a course on church development with an emphasis on Servant Leadership. In July, Gerald Paden, a longtime instructor at SIBI in Lubbock, will teach Sacrificial Systems and the book of Hebrews. More good instructors are lined up for future classes.
Read more in the attached PDF
Hilda and I joined 451 people for a victory dinner in Lubbock, TX on April 19, 2008. The dinner marked the end of a 3 year capital campaign to raise $12 million dollars.
This was the largest fund raiser in the history of Sunset and was a daunting task. Shortly after we gathered, Truitt Adair, the Executive Director for SIBI announced the results of the campaign. Our brotherhood donated a whopping $13,070,894.00! Thats right, we exceeded our goal by over 1 million dollars! To God be the glory!
