While we here at Summit know with confidence that Stuart Cook has gone home to be with our Lord - the Lord who has saved Stu with His very own blood and who has guided him and Marilyn in their ministry for so many long years - it is still news that is hard to hear.  We will miss him.

Dr. Stuart Cook, a native of Wyoming, gained the particular distinction of being the first graduate from Platte Valley Bible College (now SCC) with a Bachelors degree after having begun as a freshman and completing all four years of his studies right here at this college.  There were a few who graduated from our college before him but none who started and completed their studies for their degree right here.  Even as a Freshman, Stu began his coursework with an anticipation that someday, he would become a missionary.

Stu and Marilyn met while both were attending this college and in 1955 were married. After serving as a minister for five years in Lyman NE, a ministry that began while Stu was still a student here, he and Marilyn moved to Casper, WY and established the Richard Street Christian Church where they served for 9 years.  
In 1966 Stu and his wife Marilyn left their ministry at Richard Street to become missionaries in South Africa.  Perhaps the ministry that Stuart is most well known for is the inner-city ministry that he began in Johannesburg, which he called Aletheia.  This was a ministry that provided residential accommodation and counseling to many in need of this help.  As Stu developed this Christian outreach, Marilyn became instrumental in developing an extensive children’s ministry to help meet the needs of children in the Waterberg Mountains of the Limpopo province of northern South Africa.  This is a ministry that continues to this day. 

The extensive cross-cultural experiences and life encounters that Stuart and Marilyn gained while working as a team provided Stu with the insights that led him to attain a Phd in anthropology and eventually develop the “Insight” seminars that he believed to be highly valuable to helping those who he was able to minister to in South Africa.  In 1997 Dr. Stuart Cook conducted one of these seminars for students here at Summit Christian College.

As we pray now for Marilyn, that God will watch over her, protect her, comfort her and give her strength, let us also remember to pray for their three daughters and their families as they seek to cope with this great and unexpected loss and the resulting change that this will most certainly cause in their lives.  We pray that God will hold them close to Him while they continue look to God for their guidance, comfort and strength as the seek to follow his lead in South Africa.
Sincerely,
David K. Parrish
President
Summit Christian College