Greetings brethren! For some of our readers, you will notice an obvious change, the United News Philippines has transitioned to the United News Asia. We are thrilled to have the opportunity of sharing news of our brethren scattered throughout the region. I would like to take this opportunity to solicit your contributions of news and articles for future issues of this publication. Our goal is to keep our members better informed of the progress of God’s work in Asia and to help our brethren become better acquainted through the articles that appear in this publication. If you would like to submit material for the Untied News Asia, please submit it to your pastor or you can send it directly to me at david_baker@ucg.org.

It is hard to believe that the Feast of Tabernacles will begin in less than three weeks. I hope your plans are well underway regarding the Feast. We are blessed to have three Feast sites in the Philippines as well as a site in Sri Lanka and our newest site in Singapore. You can see photos of the Feast sites at http://ucg.org.ph/feast/; http://ucg-srilanka.org/feast/; and http://ucg-singapore.org/feast/. I am looking forward to spending the Feast with our brethren in the Philippines this year.

We also have local Web sites for the following countries: Philippines http://www.ucg.org.ph/; Hong Kong http://www.ucg-hongkong.org/; Singapore http://www.ucg-singapore.org/; and Sri Lanka http://www.ucg-srilanka.org/. If you have Internet access, please check out these sites and become better acquainted with some of your brethren.

In this issue you can read about the Asian Leadership Conference that was recently held in Davao City. We are very thankful for the help of the Home Office in providing the visit of Mr. Pinelli and Mr. Welty and the very informative material they presented. We are also grateful for the visit of Mr. Meeker and his family and their invaluable contribution to the conference. We hope that through God’s blessings we will be able to build on this foundational conference with future meetings.

Another exciting development will begin with the September/October issue of the Good News magazine. Beginning with this upcoming issue, we plan to mail from our office in Davao all copies of The Good News sent to Asia. By doing so, we will lighten the workload of our Home Office staff and should be able to realize a financial savings in shipping and postage. We would like to solicit your prayers for the success of this new arrangement.

I hope you enjoy this first issue of United News Asia and look forward to seeing many of you at the Feast!