Events, Accomplishments, and Plans
Dear Wake Up Family,
Where did 2020 go? Each year, I’m reminded of the old saying, “The older you get the faster time goes by.” I know the number of days in 2020 was 366. Still, 2020 again seemed to go by quicker than 2019!
Here are a few of the events that occurred in 2020:
- The impeachment trial of President Trump
- Brush fires in Australia which decimated 47 million acres and killed at least 34 people
- The United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union
- The COVID coronavirus killed over 1.5 million people
- Basketball player Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its worst single day drop
- Demonstrations and riots over police killings
- A highly contested presidential election
- 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate in Beirut, Lebanon exploded
- Wildfires in the western U.S. burned millions of acres
- Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died
While these events are newsworthy, for most of us, they do not significantly affect our lives.
However, during the year 2020, Wake Up America Seminars had more serious changes than any year since we began in 1987. Here are a few:
- As most of you know, the one change with critical impact today and for the future was at the end of 2019, Larry Wilson stepped down as Director of WUAS. Larry has been the heart and soul of WUAS for decades and we, like you, miss him and continue to grieve over his absence.
- The COVID crisis hit and WUAS was indirectly affected. We like many other businesses in our state, transitioned to working from home for nearly two months. Thankfully, no one in the office was infected and we were able to keep up with all the necessary office activities.
- For over 30 years, we had rented a small office from the same owner. During this time we warehoused all of our materials in four storage lockers located about two blocks from the office. This year the owner decided to retire and we agreed to purchase the building. The building quadruples our office and storage space.
- We have transferred all the items from the storage lockers into our current building which saves rental fees every month.
- Because there have been few renovations to the two offices over the past thirty years, we have upgraded one office and plan to complete the rest of the office space during January.
During the time of all these changes, we have continued to produce books and booklets using the wealth of material Larry has written in past decades.
None of these office changes would have been possible without your support in sponsoring the materials we have produced. Often when people receive new materials, they assume Larry is still writing today despite having ALS. However, this is not the case. During Larry’s lifetime of serving the Lord he has written voluminously, and we are blessed to be able to “repackage” his materials so they can be shared. There is enough source material to keep us going for many years!
We look forward to another exciting year of developing, editing, proofing, printing, and sharing but we cannot continue without help from two sources. The first source is from the Lord, because we have learned many years ago that nothing we do at Wake Up can be accomplished without His help. Second, we need your continued help to keep sharing the materials that Larry has written. We thank you for your past sharing!
We hope the enclosed calendar will be useful and inspirational in 2021. May the Lord bless each of you during this coming year.
With deep Christian love,
Marty
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