A Sight Ministry Center dedication
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[A Sight Ministry Center, under the auspices of Lutheran Braille Workers (LBW), will be dedicated Sunday, Jan. 9 in Baldwin. The Center will be known as SIGHT (Seeing Impaired Gaining His Truth) and is located in St. John's Lutheran School. Dr. Phillip Pledger, president of Lutheran Braille Workers, will be the guest preacher at the 10 a.m. worship service. The dedication will follow at 11:30 a.m. St. John's pastor, Rev. John Taggatz, invites the public to attend.
Before and after the dedication, the Center will be open for those attending to see how Large Print material is assembled. Volunteers will be scheduled to assemble the books. The Center is expected to produce 200 books per month. Sandra Ruhmann, who has been spearheading the project, said, "We are excited to start producing the books. We will welcome anyone who would like to volunteer."
More than 180 million people around the world are experiencing life with a visual impairment. Among these, 45 million are blind and 135 million have only partial sight. There are countries where less than 10 percent of blind persons are literate. In a number of countries, less than 15 percent of blind children receive an education.
Lutheran Braille Workers, based in California, is one of the largest providers of Christian Braille and specialized Large Print in the world.
All publications by LBW are offered free of charge and are made possible through the efforts of over 5,100 faithful volunteers. These volunteers, located in almost 200 Work Centers throughout the United States, Canada and Brazil, produced 16,945,152 pages of material or around 250,000 volumes in 2009. Their gifts of time and generous donors make it possible to send Christian material in more than 30 languages to visually impaired people in more than 120 countries.
The Center is being funded through a grant from the Lutheran Women's Missionary League and contributions from individuals and the area Lutheran churches.