The world headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is abuzz with preparations for the upcoming General Conference Session. The 60th meeting of its kind in the 152-year history of the denomination will take place in San Antonio, Texas and will see as many as 60,000 people from more than 170 countries gather in the Alamodome.
In Zimbabwe, you can buy “Revelation of Hope” drinking water bearing the portrait of Seventh-day Adventist Church president Ted N.C. Wilson. Hundreds of thousands of plastic bottles appeared on store shelves in the run-up to the two-week “Revelation of Hope” evangelistic series that ends on Sabbath, May 30, with an expected 30,000 baptisms.
The Seventh-day Day Adventist Church in the Dominican Republic crowned three of its ministers as top winners of their first nation-wide Bible boom competition last week. The event, which gathered 12 finalists from across six of the church’s regions, climaxed with a special grand finale program at the Piantini Adventist Church in Santo Domingo on May 17. Contestants were tested on 1 and 2nd Timothy and Titus, as well as the church’s Bible Commentary on those books.
Warren Judd, former CEO of the Adventist Media Center in California, died after a struggle with cancer on May 26. Daniel R. Jackson, president of the North American Division, offered condolences on behalf of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
More than 7,000 people gathered in Manaus, Brazil—the largest city in the Amazon—to express thanks to the government for protecting religious liberty. The event, held Saturday, May 23, was the third religious liberty festival to be held in Brazil, and was organized by the South American chapter of the International Religious Liberty Association (IRLA). Dr. John Graz, Secretary General of the IRLA, was one of the international speakers featured at the festival.
Zimbabwe is abuzz about Jesus as the Seventh-day Adventist Church enters its final week of evangelistic meetings and the health minister, overwhelmed at the sight of thousands of people receiving free healthcare at an Adventist-organized clinic, asked the church to consider building a hospital. Tens of thousands of people are gathering nightly for a two-week evangelistic series in several hundred churches and other venues.
Rather than travel to South America on the usual mission trip to build housing, an Adventist professor tasked his class with constructing one of the world’s smallest homes. The result — a fully-functional and livable miniature house measuring a mere 148 square feet (13 square meters) on an 18-foor (5.5-meter) flatbed trailer — provides a model that the Andrews University students plan to replicate and build for underprivileged people in the community.
An Adventist university in Mexico’s poorest state is finding that free root canals and eyeglasses are softening the hearts of a neighboring community that was once so hostile toward the school that it seized a chunk of its land. Some 135 teachers and students from Linda Vista Adventist University treated hundreds of people in Rincón Chamula, a community of 1,500 people located 1.5 miles (3 kilometers) from the campus.
Violet Moss Brown, the oldest Jamaican had a group of Seventh-day Adventists spellbound with century old stories as they celebrated Mother’s day and praised God for her long life. The approximately twenty individuals, who came from the Seventh-Adventist Church in Duanvale, Trelawny - the same community where 115 year-old Mrs. Moss Brown was born - were all amazed with her wit and sharp mind.
The 60th General Conference session will offer several firsts: electronic voting, a mobile app, an electronic agenda for delegates, and, most crucially for the rest of us, an opportunity to review the agenda in advance. Usually the General Conference Secretariat, which sets the agenda, provides the information only to the delegates. But for the first time it is making details of the plan available to the world church before the July 2-11 business meeting starts at the Alamodome stadium in San Antonio, Texas.
A major evangelistic series in Zimbabwe gathered steam on its second day Monday, with attendance at the main meeting outside the capital, Harare, nearly doubling in size from opening night to reach about 18,000 people. Two weeks of “Revelation of Hope” evangelistic meetings are being held at 87 sites in 17 cities countrywide following months of preparatory work through 5,000 small group Bible studies and Voice of Prophecy classes.
A major two-week evangelistic series began on Sunday evening with thousands of people gathering at 87 sites across Zimbabwe, including 10,000 people in a large field and parking lot outside the capital, Harare. The “Revelation of Hope” meetings, part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Mission to the Cities initiative to share Jesus in the world’s biggest cities, will culminate on Sabbath, May 30, with an expected 30,000 baptisms.