SetCtrlVal not updating control

I am developing with CVI after a few years away. I have a string control that I want to update and call SetCtrlVal() but it does not update the control text until after the GUI window x is clicked. Actually, none of the code after RunUserInterface () runs until that point. I  do not remember this from the past but I checked my version at home and saw the same behavior.

So, how do you get code to run after RunUserInterface? For instance how would a textbox that continually gets status information, such as "Interface opened,  DUT not responding, etc be implemented?