Inter-America highlights its colors, cultures and languages during GC Session

Adventists from Chiapas Mexican Union pose for a picture at the IAD booth at the Henry B. Gonzalez Exhibit Hall in San Antonio, Texas, on July 4, 2015. Images by Daniel Gallardo/IAD

July 16, 2015 | San Antonio, Texas, United States | Libna Stevens/IAD

Seventh-day Adventists rom across the Inter-American Division (IAD) territory celebrated their diversity, culture, and church heritage during the 60th General Conference Session, held in San Antonio, Texas, July 2-11, 2015.

The IAD’s exhibit booth, on display at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center and Exhibit Hall, highlighted the 24 major church regions and 15 universities in the territory. It is the largest booth the IAD has ever featured at a GC Session.

Pastor Leon B. Wellington, vice president for the church in Inter-America and general manager of the booth, says he was gratified that the time spent designing and planning the booth contributed to its popularity and success during the Session.

“The Inter-American Division represents scores of different cultures and languages, so the Session gave us the opportunity to celebrate our successes as a church and highlight some of the challenges we face in working with so much diversity,” says Wellington.

During each day of the Session, three unions, distributed gifts and souvenirs to visitors, and shared their respective countries, culture, church growth and evangelism initiatives.

In addition, 16 IAD organizations featured their programs and products in their stationed booths and had the opportunity to talk more about their projects, plans and curriculum.

The IAD booth area included a team of professionals from media centers and volunteers from across the church in Inter-America which worked on productions offering daily creative coverage during the session, according to Abel Marquez, IAD communication director overseeing production and booth art director.

“We were able to feature our multi-cultural territory every day in our booth drawing thousands of people who wanted to learn more about cultures, traditional costumes, customs, and the like, as well as take some time to relax, chat and laugh with church members from Inter-America,” says Marquez. “The satisfaction was not only seeing them take a souvenir, but see people leave our booth with a smile.”

The production team provided content for social network, the internet, radio and television for the IAD territory, as well as partnerships with different official church channels like Esperanza TV, Adventist News Network, Nuevo Tiempo and others, says Marquez.

For those who were not able to attend the GC Session in San Antonio, the following links will lead to videos of the productions done during the 10-day session:

Inter-America’s 2010-2015 Video Report, click HERE

Inter-America’s daily report from its Exhibit Booth, click HERE

View 12 Miracle Stories at GC Session, click HERE

Esperanza TV daily news coverage, click HERE

IAD’s gallery of photos, click HERE