Colombia Adventist University is looking to relocate its campus from Medellin because of heavy taxes, but the pending move has not disrupted its strong mission outreach program, with hundreds of students sharing Jesus in the bustling city and showing interest in working abroad. Colombia itself has become a haven of religious freedom, a fact celebrated by Adventist Church leaders at a weekend conference of 5,000 people.
Hundreds of thousands of Adventist young people shared Jesus’ love in 132 countries for Global Youth Day on Sabbath, March 21, setting a new record that surpassed organizers’ expectations. Numbers were still coming in late Saturday night, but Gilbert Cangy, youth ministries director for the Seventh-day Adventist world church, declared the third annual event a resounding success.
Seventh-day Adventist youth around the world will take to the streets of their cities and communities on Sabbath, March 21, 2015, to engage in a day of spreading kindness and hope. The special day designated as Global Youth Day, is sponsored by the General Conference’s youth ministries department and motivates young people to “be the sermon” as they show the love of Jesus in their communities. Young people across Inter-America’s 24 major church regions are scheduled to share food and clothing, march for health, visit hospitals and nursing homes, donate blood, offer prayers in plazas, hold concerts in public areas, and much more.
The Adventist Church’s newly formed Panama Union Mission announced that 2,530 people have been baptized since January as the result of a major evangelistic series. The baptisms underscored a commitment by the local church to prepare people for Jesus’ return and provided a moment of nostalgia for visiting Adventist Church leader Ted N.C. Wilson, who was reminded that his father had led an evangelistic series 31 years earlier in Panama.
A vegetarian diet may reduce your risk of certain kinds of cancer by 22 percent, according to a new analysis from the Adventist Health Study-2. Researchers at Loma Linda University Health found that eating a plant-based diet offers significant protection against cancers of the colon and rectum, the second-leading cause of cancer death in the United States after lung cancer.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Cuba made history with 2,000 young people donating blood, conducting health screenings, and distributing thousands of books at two of the communist island’s most revered sites. Many of the young people traveled for hours and over hundreds of miles to reach the city of Santiago de Cuba and participate in the event on its Plaza de la Revolución, the site of major government demonstrations, and Abel Santamaría Park, where an armed uprising in the early 1950s helped kick-start the country’s revolution.
At least four Seventh-day Adventist churches were flattened by a devastating cyclone that struck the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu over the weekend, church leaders said. Many church members also have lost their homes and taken shelter in evacuation centers, but none are known to have been injured when Tropical Cyclone Pam pummeled the islands on Saturday.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church has opened its first wellness center in Venezuela, offering 60 patient beds, massage rooms, and a swimming pool for water treatments on a forest-covered mountain. The facility, Centro Integral Adventista de Vida Sana, will provide natural remedies and preventative medicine to the surrounding community of more than 55,000 people and, church leaders said, serve as a testament to the power of God to provide construction materials at a time of economic crisis.
Thousands of people, many hugging each other and weeping with joy, thronged around a vast lake for a mass baptism last weekend that concluded the Adventist Church’s first major evangelistic series in Nicaragua. Dozens of pastors wearing white shirts and ties baptized 1,884 people in the rippling waters of Lake Nicaragua on Sunday. Another 200 people who could not make it to the lake were baptized in local churches, bringing the total number of nationwide baptisms since October to 12,000.
The Adventist Church in El Salvador has baptized 1,500 people, including 870 people on a sweltering Sabbath day, as it presses ahead with plans to establish 100 new churches in the first half of this year. The church service at the Adventist Training School of El Salvador started early, at about 7:45 a.m. on March 14, to ensure that the 520 baptisms planned for the school could be held before the sun rose too high.
A 110-year-old man in Guatemala could well be the oldest man baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church and an example, church leaders said, that it is never to late to accept Jesus. Joaquin Tzoc and his new wife, Petronilla, 98, became the first people in their large family to join the Adventist Church when they were baptized in the mountainous town of San Andrés Sajcabajá near the border with Mexico.
The mayor of Belize’s largest city praised the Seventh-day Adventist Church for its work in the Central American country and underscored his appreciation for its large network of local schools. Belize City Mayor Darrell Bradley, flanked by a vice mayor, welcomed Adventist Church president Ted N.C. Wilson and his wife, Nancy, at the airport upon their arrival Thursday for the start of a six-country tour of the church’s Inter-American Division.