Something unusual is happening in London amid two seemingly unconnected events. People are showing an unprecedented interest in the Seventh-day Adventist health message after a series of church-organized fairs, and public uncertainty is running high following Britain’s recent vote to leave the European Union.
Seventh-day Adventist volunteers are providing medical care to 650 refugees at a recently opened camp near Greece’s capital, and they are appealing for assistance as more refugees arrive every day. Adventist Help, a bus-based medical clinic operated by ASI Europe, an Adventist supporting ministry, has been tasked by the Greek military with caring for the refugees since the Oinofyta camp opened 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Athens in April.
Seventh-day Adventist scholars in partnership with an international body of specialists are studying what they call a disturbing paradox: while the principle of religious freedom has gained a strong foothold within international law, restrictions on religious practice are actually on the rise around the world. The group of scholars, who met at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, expressed concern that the ideal of religious freedom as a universal human right remains elusive in practice and religious repression continues unabated in many countries despite decades of international support and promotion.
Historic Environment Scotland, a government agency that helps renovate historic buildings, has allotted £104,280 (US$139,000) toward the future Hope Healthy Living Center in Paisley, a city located just 7 miles (11 kilometers) east of Glasgow and 50 miles from Edinburgh. John Wilby, treasurer of the Paisley Seventh-day Adventist Church, said that the new center could potentially serve 25 percent of Scotland's population of 5.3 million and that the church was actively seeking to raise the remaining $470,000 needed to make that happen.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church has updated the Church Manual after finding that part of an amendment voted at General Conference Session last year was unintentionally excluded. “It has come to our attention that there was omission on p.127 of the current Church Manual. The correction has been made, and a statement has been issued in that regard,” Hensley M. Moorooven, associate secretary of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, said Wednesday in an e-mail to General Conference employees.
Local Seventh-day Adventist believers have sprung into action after a powerful earthquake killed dozens of people in central Italy on Wednesday. The 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck a mountainous area located about 65 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Rome at 3:36 a.m. local time, killing at least 159 people and injuring about 360 others. Rescuers feared that many people might remain buried in rubble.
Adventist Risk Management, the Seventh-day Adventist Church-owned insurer, has issued guidelines on how churches and schools should respond to “Pokémon Go” players, advising them to avoid overreacting and to seek opportunities to leave a good impression about Adventists. “Pokémon Go,” a game app that requires players to catch Pokémon characters with their mobile devices at real-life locations, has taken the gaming world by storm since its release in July.
Adventist Community Services Disaster Response (ACS DR) sprang to action after disasters hit Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Clayton, California last week. Volunteer teams comprised of church members and ministry leaders are working together in response to historic flooding in Baton Rouge that has displaced more than 200,000 residents, and a massive fire that has destroyed 175 homes and building in Clayton.
Thomas Beihl didn’t get the desired response when he went door to door at the men’s residence hall at Southern Adventist University, asking fellow students whether they had conducted Bible studies. About 150 students had signed up to conduct Bible studies during a 2006 evangelistic series in the U.S. state of Tennessee. Beihl, a freshman at the time, had agreed to track their progress on an Excel spreadsheet.
The leader of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Nepal has called for prayers amid a state clampdown on evangelistic outreach, including the distribution of religious literature and even having a Bible in a Christian orphanage. All evangelistic activity is prohibited under a new Nepalese Constitution that came into force in September 2015.
In a first, a Seventh-day Adventist believer has received the “Nobel Prize for Blindness” for coding Braille in ancient biblical languages that allow blind students to study the original texts on their own. Ray McAllister, a blind adjunct teacher at Andrews University and a licensed massage therapist, and his organization, the Semitic Scholars, were awarded the prestigious Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award by the National Federation of the Blind in July.
The other day, inventor Andrew DePaula sat down on an airplane beside a man in his late teens or early 20s. The young man seemed more interested in staring out the plane window than talking — until DePaula pulled out a business card-sized piece of paper. DePaula showed his seatmate that the ordinary-looking piece of paper could be folded into the world’s first and only paper USB drive.