24 September 2012
Dear brother and friend: Greetings and blessings to you from the Lutheran Seminary in Pretoria!
It’s that time of year again and we are working on the Seminary budget for next year. Below you will find a list of costs for students, who want to come to study confessional theology at this Lutheran Seminary. Although the flight costs vary due to the different distances, the basic costs remain fairly constant so that it takes at least $US 5,000.00 per student for a year at the Seminary in Pretoria. You will appreciate that that is remarkably less than what it takes to study in N. America for that time. The attached list shows what this overall cost entails. Another advantage is that the context is still quite African and the adaptation is not that dramatic when the students join us here as it would be if they would translocate to N. America or even Cambridge for that matter.
We have plans here to provide accommodation in a guesthouse for visiting staff, students and visitors as a regular source of rental income. These plans are making headway as we now have 2 houses, which are rented out and which supplement the Seminaries budget. However we are still quite some distance away from financial sustainability and independence – even if that remains a very high priority and big focus of our plans. We still need significant financial help to address some of the costs incurred by the nearly 40 students enrolled at the LTS in various courses. Without serious outside help this is not yet possible and we would have had to turn student applications down.
This October our Board of directors is meeting once again and the budget for 2013 is to be tabled. Although we are trying to cut our expenditures wherever we can, we still face a considerable challenge to pay the costs to support those students already enrolled, who want to continue their studies next year, but also to help those Churches in Liberia, Uganda, Sudan, Zambia, Botswana, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Congo and Kenya, who want to send new students.
Your help to support our Seminary to address this urgent issue has been most welcome in the past. In that way you have helped our Seminary and also some of the more than 10 Lutheran Churches in Africa involved in a very significant and helpful way – and also these specific Lutheran students and future pastors in a very personal way. I can assure you that all of them and their congregations and churches together praise the triune God for the work he does through you – even in our midst. It is our fervent prayer that you and your Church are enabled to help in this blessed and fruitful manner!
Thank you for considering this in your prayers and meetings!
Peace, grace and mercy be with you always +
In His service most sincerely
Wilhelm Weber
Rector of the LTS in Tshwane
lts.org.za
For contact or banking donation information, contact us.
Here is a breakdown of costs per student by country: