Boy Revives Dying Church

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

A Seventh-day Adventist church elder asked Alejandro to preach his first evangelistic meetings at the age of 8.

Image © Pacific Press

“We want to plant seeds, not to harvest,” the elder told Alejandro’s mother.

The church was dying on Tierra Bomba, an island off Colombia’s coast in the Caribbean Sea. Its head elder had resigned and left the church on the last day of evangelistic meetings that he was leading. Church members were discouraged, and many had stopped worshiping on Sabbath.

Alejandro, who had preached since he was 4, was scared to speak at the first evening meeting. But Mother gave him a big hug, and they prayed together.

People packed the yard of a church member’s house to hear the boy speak.

Hoping to disrupt the weeklong meetings, the former head elder organized his own meetings in his home across the street from Alejandro’s site. He invited current and former church members to attend his daily meetings.

People walking to his house saw the boy speaking as they passed by and stopped. “Who was the child preacher?” they wondered. Many stayed to listen.

The former elder was upset to see people going to Alejandro’s meeting, and he marched over to demand that they come to his house.

“Come on!” he told people, grabbing them by the arm. “Let’s go!”

Some people went with him but, when he wasn’t paying attention, snuck back to listen to Alejandro preach.

This went on for several days. Then church members invited the former elder to the evangelistic meetings and he came.

As part of the meetings, Alejandro visited homes of people who had responded to his appeals for baptism. During the first round of visitations, three people confirmed their desire for baptism. During a second round, an unmarried couple asked for baptism. Alejandro’s mother helped them complete the paperwork so they could be married. A total of seven people were baptized at the end of the weeklong meetings.

Alejandro left Tierra Bomba happy. The church members also were happy. The church was strong and growing.

“Jesus triumphed,” Alejandro said.

Alejandro, a 10-year-old child preacher in Cartagena, Colombia, has led 18 people, including his parents and older brother, to baptism since he was 4. Read more in this quarter’s Children’s Mission, downloadable at bit.ly/childrensmission.

This quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering will help open a “Better Life” center to train missionaries at Colombia Adventist University in Alejandro’s homeland, Colombia.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission.
Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

Amen!(0)

The post Inside Story: Colombia ~ Boy Revives Dying Church first appeared on Sabbath School Net.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SabbathSchoolNet/~3/GSnRzdTiziw/

A Church for Tourists

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

The new pastor was shocked when he showed up at the Bucharest International Seventh-day Adventist Church, the only English-speaking church in Romania’s capital, and found only three people present. All three were Romanians.

Image © Pacific Press

Three weeks later, pastor Benjamin Stan learned that one of those three, a 21-year-old woman, was leaving. He wondered why God had led him to a dead church. “Why am I here?” he prayed. “Why did You give me this call?”

At that moment, two American tourists walked in the door. Benjamin realized that tourists need a place to worship. He kept praying.

A couple weeks later, he found a man dressed in a suit and tie waiting outside the church. The man lived with his family in Poland and worked in Romania. He belonged to another Christian church but, after studying the Bible, wanted a Sabbath-keeping church. Benjamin realized that there are foreigners who work in Romania but don’t speak Romanian. They need a place to worship.

After several months, Benjamin suggested holding Sabbath School and the divine worship service on Sabbath mornings. Until then, the church didn’t have any Sabbath School, and its hour-long worship service took place on Sabbath evenings. The two members opposed the proposal. They went to Romanian churches on Sabbath mornings and didn’t want to lose those friends. But Benjamin was insistent. “We do not come here to study English,” he said. “We come here to study the Bible. We need to be a church.”

Visiting other churches, Benjamin invited two teens and a man of about 30 to help organize the worship program. He advertised the new morning worship schedule on social media. That first Sabbath, 32 people showed up.

“You should have seen the expression on the faces of the two members when they arrived,” Benjamin recalled. “Their eyes were big. They were surprised when they saw so many people, especially young people, in the church.”

The Polish man was baptized several weeks later.

Today, Benjamin has no doubt that the church, started by pastor Adrian Bocaneanu in 2010, serves an important role in Bucharest. It has 26 members, and weekly attendance ranges from 30 to 50 people, including tourists, foreign workers, and international students.

What happened to those three people who attended the church on Benjamin’s first Sabbath? They are now very involved, including the young woman who left. She returned and is now a leader.

Connect with the Bucharest International Seventh-day Adventist Church at  “englishadventist” on Facebook.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

Amen!(0)

The post Inside Story: Romania ~ A Church for Tourists first appeared on Sabbath School Net.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SabbathSchoolNet/~3/Ww3qAHAcP80/

Bawling Tattoo Artist

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

Dr. Hernando Díaz was assisting a patient at the Adventist Medical Center in Medellin, Colombia, when a shadowy figure at his office door startled him. It was a shaven-headed man covered with explicit tattoos. Tattoos formed a black-and-blue web over his head. Tattoos covered his arms and hands.

Image © Pacific Press

“It’s my turn to see you,” the man declared.

“Please wait for your turn,” Hernando said.

Several minutes later, the man entered the office and immediately broke into tears. The big burly bloke was bawling like a baby. Hernando looked at the man’s paperwork. It said he was HIV positive. “I don’t want to have HIV,” the man said, tears streaming down his tattooed cheeks.

“What happened?” Hernando asked. “What do you do?”

“I’m a tattoo artist, and the body is my canvass,” the man said.

“How did you contract HIV? Are you promiscuous or a homosexual?”

The man said he was neither and had contracted HIV through his work.

“But I don’t want HIV,” he said. “I don’t want to die.”

“There is Someone who can heal you,” Hernando said. “I know you may not believe in God, but He can help you.”

The man acknowledged being an atheist. But he was willing to reconsider.

“Do you want me to pray for you?” Hernando said. “Do you want to accept Jesus as your Savior?”

“Yes,” the man said, weeping.

Hernando led the man through the sinner’s prayer. When the man said Jesus’ name at the end, he fell to the floor.

Hernando sent the tattoo artist away for a second HIV test. The next week, the man returned with a happy grin on his face. “I don’t have HIV,” he said. “I want to give thanks to God and you because God has healed me.”

Follow-up testing had given him a clean bill of health. He considered his HIV-negative status to be a miracle from God.

Months later, Hernando and his wife, Monica, were shopping at a mall when they heard someone screaming, “Doctor! Doctor!” The tattoo artist ran over to Hernando and picked him off the ground in an enormous bear hug. He praised God for working a miracle in his life.

The tattoo artist is one of dozens of people led to Jesus by Hernando, a 60-year-old Seventh-day Adventist physician serving at the Adventist Medical Center on the campus of Colombia Adventist University in Medellin.

This quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering will help open a missionary training center at Colombia Adventist University.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

Amen!(0)

The post Inside Story: Columbia ~ Bawling Tattoo Artist first appeared on Sabbath School Net.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SabbathSchoolNet/~3/35HJUsoRlBo/