Nearly 1,000 Seventh-day Adventists traveled to three main hilltops surrounding the city of Medellin, in Colombia, on Mar. 8, to pray and release solar balloons as they prepare for a city-wide impact next Saturday. The project, coined as the “A Smile for Medellin”, will seek to bring smiles to the people of Medellin with acts of kindness, health expos, hospital and nursing home visitations and more.
Three of Montemorelos University’s media center employees traveled to Papua New Guinea earlier this year to participate in an initiative led by the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s official television network Hope Channel. The initiative was to produce some 303 television episodes in preparation for the launch of the country’s first free-to-air Christian television channel.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Jamaica has joined the government and other interest groups in supporting the need for special support and accommodation for the disabled with a special declaration made this weekend. The declaration, the first to be made in the Adventist World Church, was made during a Special Needs Summit hosted by the church from March 6-8, 2015 at Camp Verley, St. Catherine.
Many Christians would not want to be caught dead in a bar. But a group of Jamaican Adventists spent four weeks in a bar — not drinking, smoking, or dancing but praising the Lord. The Duncans Adventist Church organized an evangelistic series in the Logwood Walk Community rum bar after a long search for a suitable venue for the meetings in rural northwest Jamaicia.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church in North Mexico wants to make sure its special needs church members can better access its church facilities and be included in activities throughout its 10 local church regions. More than 120 church pastors, elders laypersons as well as persons with disabilities, convened during a recent summit in Montemorelos, Mexico, to discuss this need and to strategize about how to cater to dozens of its members with special needs.
More than 2,000 Seventh-day Adventist young people took to Jamaican streets last weekend to spruce up neighborhoods and encourage healthy lifestyles as part of a church initiative to keep youth away from crime. Crime is a growing problem among young people in Jamaica, and local Adventist leaders are fighting back with Operation Save A Youth, or O-SAY, which mobilizes young people to volunteer and help others in their communities and inspire at-risk peers.
Mobilizing an army of leaders and active members to spread the gospel is among the top priorities of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Guatemala. With more than 38,000 trained active members, the church in Guatemala is continuing to ensure that its leaders and active members get further certified to strengthen the church and continue sharing the gospel in their communities.
A record 2,000 Seventh-day Adventist couples from across Jamaica renewed their marital vows at a gathering where they learned that the key to a successful marriage is humility and the full surrender of self to God. The couples, young and old, waited in long lines at Northern Caribbean University in Mandeville, Jamaica, to gain free entrance to the couples’ conference, which is held once every five years and was organized by the Jamaica Union Conference.
The Curacao Religious Liberty Foundation (CRLF), initiated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, recently hosted a religious freedom festival on the island. The CRLF, an organization started by the Seventh-day Adventist Church to promote religious freedom among the various religious groups in Curacao and Bonaire, is very much like a chapter of the International Religious Liberty Association, said Pastor Shurman Kook, public affairs and religious liberty director for the church in Curacao and Bonaire. “The only difference is the legal form of the entity," he said.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church has opened a Jamaican chapter of its International Religious Liberty Association, which defends the rights of all faiths, at a festival attended by senior government officials and thousands of other people in Kingston. Leaders of the chapter, called the National Religious Liberty Association, said the group was needed because Jamaicans should not take their current religious freedom for granted.
There was standing room only as thousands of Seventh-day Adventists from across the Dominican Republic crowded the Palacio de los Deportes in Santo Domingo, to rejoice in their evangelistic efforts as they witnessed hundreds of baptisms and heard top world church leaders speak on Jan. 17, 2015. More than 20,000 people crowded the 15,000-seat auditorium. Some grabbed a spot on the floor, sat on steps, or stood in the hallways while some 15,000 stayed outside to listen in on the live radio broadcast. Many left their hometowns in the middle of the night to get to the auditorium at 6:00a.m., local church leaders said.
The city of La Romana in southeast Dominican Republic yesterday declared it will rename one of its streets after Ellen G. White, one of the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The announcement came during a special ceremony held at La Romana’s municipal building. In attendance were the mayor, Maritza Suero, city officials, and Seventh-day Adventist world church President Ted N. C. Wilson.