wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Notes about people

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This story available online:

www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2009/09148<http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2009/09148

>Notes about people

>by Bethany Furkin

>by Jerry L. Van Marter
>Presbyterian News Service

The Rev. Jonah Salim, whose faith journey from Iraq to
Egypt to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was chronicled in
a recent Presbyterian News Service story
[www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2009/09089], has been awarded a grant
to continue his theological studies at McCormick
Theological Seminary [www.mcormick.edu].

The 33-year-old member of Lake Huron Presbytery ― the first
Iraqi pastor to be received as a minister member of the
PC(USA) ― is missionary for peacemaking at First
Presbyterian Church of Bay City, MI. His continuing
education is funded by a grant from the Financial Aid for
Studies [www.pcusa.org/financialaid] program of the General
Assembly Council. Lake Huron is also contributing to
Salim's further education.

"Because Jonah is newly here in the U.S., we were able to
supplement his Continuing Education award with a grant from
a restricted fund for new immigrants, which supports
student grant recipients across a variety of our financial
programs," said FAS associate Laura Bryan.

Information for this story furnished by Emily Enders Odom,
communications associate.

># # #

L. Edwin Wang, who served as the chief executive of the
Lutheran Church's Board of Pensions for 25 years until his
retirement in 1987, died in his home of natural causes on
Jan. 28. He was 89.

"Ed had tremendous energy to serve other people," said John
G. Kapanke, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Board of
Pensions president, who worked for Wang from 1973 to 1987
and assumed Wang's position under the newly formed ELCA
Board of Pensions in 1988. "While he was intellectually
gifted and a student of insurance and pension matters, his
natural gift was creating and promoting plans to support
our leaders. He cared that their benefits were strong and
wanted to free them from worry so they could focus on
ministry."

An Oregon native, Wang was successfully managing an
insurance agency in Oakland, CA, when he was asked to move
to Minneapolis in 1956 and serve the Augustana Pension and
Aid Fund. When Augustana and three other Lutheran church
bodies merged in 1963 to create the LCA, Wang was named
chief executive. Under his leadership, the assets of the
LCA Board of Pensions grew from $7 million to about $805
million.

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