ETBU Graduates 50 Students Saturday

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MARSHALL NEWS MESSENGER (12/16/12)- Family and friends gathered in the Baker Auditorium of the Ornelas Spiritual Life Center at East Texas Baptist University on Saturday morning to see 50 graduates begin the next phase in their lives.

ETBU students filled the first few rows of the auditorium and listened to professors and president Samuel "Dub” Oliver speak about how this was just the beginning of a new journey.

ETBU alumni and Dallas attorney Leon Carter was the keynote speaker and delivered a charge to the graduates that was filled with encouragement and important life lessons. He did warn students of that it won’t be easy when they first graduate.

"When you leave here you will be underrated and underestimated,” Carter said. "You’re going to be competing with students from UT, Baylor, Harvard, Yale and those will be the students who say you can’t compete with us.”

Carter followed up by saying that "the success is in you,” which garnered a round of applause from everyone seated in the auditorium.

"I want to tell each one of you graduates today, that this institution didn’t make you,” he said. "You made this institution what this institution is and you should be proud of that.”

He offered five important lessons for graduates to achieve their life purpose. Carter told the recent ETBU alumni that the past doesn’t predict the future, refuse to just exist, refuse to allow adversity be a determining factor, refuse to stand on the sideline and to put God first in everything.

"Put God first in whatever you do,” Carter said. "Some of you know where you’re going to be and what you’re going to be doing, but most of you don’t know what you’re going to do and don’t have a job. I can tell you if you put God first in your life you’ll be okay.”