Thousands of young people from across the United States and more than 50 other countries have descended on Louisville, Kentucky, to focus on Jesus’ Second Coming and to give something back to the community during an annual GYC convention. The five-day convention of GYC, or “Generation. Youth. Christ,” is themed “Called. Chosen. Faithful” and runs through Jan. 3 at the Kentucky International Convention Center.
Five Seventh-day Adventist students died and another 11 were injured when the 36-seat vehicle that they were riding ran off the road in the South Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea. The accident, blamed on engine failure, occurred around midday Dec. 28 as the students were returning from an Adventist student convention organized by the regional organization Sepik Adventist Students Associated, or SEASA.
Yklas Kabduakasov, a Seventh-day Adventist, was recently sentenced to serve two years in a labor camp for “inciting religious hatred.” Kabduakasov was accused of making incendiary comments during lectures with students of the capital university. A charge which Kabduakasov has consistently denied.
Robert S. Folkenberg, an innovative church administrator and mission advocate who led the Seventh-day Adventist Church for nine years, died Dec. 24 after a lengthy struggle with cancer. He was just days from his 75th birthday. Folkenberg felt that Adventists had an exciting message to share and the Internet was a great way to expand the church’s reach.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church has signed a landmark protocol with Romania’s government that gives it a voice in the country’s education system for the first time. Marius Munteanu, representing the Adventist Church in Romania, signed the protocol on educational collaboration with Education Minister Sorin Mihai Cîmpeanu and Victor Opaschi, the state secretary for religious affairs, at a ceremony in the East European country’s capital, Bucharest.
The streets of Road Town on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands were painted red as Seventh-day Adventists marched in support of the fight against the AIDS epidemic. More than 250 young people from pathfinder and adventurer clubs across the island, together with church members, gathered at the Road Town Band Stand on Nov. 28, 2015, to send a message about the importance of preventing the spread of the HIV virus and AIDS in their communities.
Adventist healthcare leaders across the Inter-American Division (IAD) reported on their institutions’ accomplishments during the last five-year period and outlined development plans for the coming years during last month’s Adventist Healthcare Service – Inter-America (AHS-IA) board meetings in Miami, Florida. AHS-IA was established in 2010 in association with Adventist Health International with headquarters at Loma Linda University, in California, said Elie S. Honore, M.D., president of AHS-IA.
physician from Yakima, Washington, who went missing while on a Seventh-day Adventist health training visit to the country in 2013. Although DNA tests have not been completed, police said it appears Sloop’s body was recovered from a building next to the park where he went missing on Tuesday, May 14, 2013.
A group of 10 people traveled by minibus from the Newbold College of Higher Education for a “harrowing, appalling, and humbling” visit to a migrant camp in Dunkirk, France, as Seventh-day Adventist volunteers expanded efforts to make a difference in Europe’s migrant crisis. Seven students and three faculty members made the two-hour trip across the English Channel to distribute food, sleeping bags, clothing, towels, blankets, toiletries, and other donated goods to some of the 2,000 migrants living at the camp.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced a significant discovery last week: the first seal impression of a Judahite king ever found by archaeologists in Jerusalem. The impression says, “Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz, king of Judah.”
Inter-America’s Public Campus Ministries will officially launch its strategic plans for the next five years by gathering over 600 leaders and delegates across the territory in Cuba this month. The event will be the first of its kind to serve as a training congress to dozens of local field leaders, university students and professionals from across the Inter-American Division (IAD) in Havana, the island’s capital city on Dec. 17-22, 2015.
The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) in Colombia was honored by the House of Representatives in Colombia for the more than 25 years of dedicated work in the country, during a special ceremony held at the Congress building in Bogota on Dec. 1, 2015. House Representative Hernan Sinisterra Valencia thanked ADRA for its early role in providing assistance and humanitarian aid in the wake of one of the November 1985 mudslide that buried the town of Armero and claimed the lives of thousands.