IN THIS ISSUE

                Pictures – Transportation

                Still Suffering For Jesus

                20 Years of Tithe

PICTURES – TRANSPORTATION

Just over four hours and I should be landing at Dulles Airport and starting the drive home. This has been a very busy but blessed trip to India for the division year-end executive committee meetings. I didn’t get a chance to get out and take many pictures, but I did snap a few from the car as we rode back and forth from the hotel to the division office.

It’s hard to imagine the massive numbers of people that fill the roads at any hour of night or day (but especially during the day). They are driving, walking, riding, cramming into busses to the point that the bus is often tipped way over to one side as it drives down the road.

In spite of a lack of funds, lack of trained pastors and teachers, and ongoing persecution in some areas, the church continues to grow rapidly. It was exciting to listen to the reports and discussions as plans were laid for the work in that massive country.

STILL SUFFERING FOR JESUS

Some of you may have heard of the sudden flare up of persecution in Orissa State in August. Thousands of Christians were driven from their homes and communities, churches were burned, and many lost their lives. One of our pastors and his mother were beheaded and burned. At first we heard his wife had also died, but she has since turned up alive after hiding out in the forest with hundreds of others for a time. The pastor used to be a Global Mission Pioneer.

The government set up camps for the displaced people but mobs were infiltrating the camps and attacking Christians there as well so most fled again into the forest. Our church established safe havens in several areas just outside the affected area and tried to get word to our members that we would take care of them there. Some were recently able to return to their home areas but others were again driven into the forest by mobs.

There are still 800 members in those safe havens. It is costing the church in excess of $1,500 a day just for food. To give you some comparison, pastors earn about $100 a month, so $1,500 is a massive amount for the conferences and union to handle. Besides the daily food, they want to provide help in resettling or relocating these members when it is possible to do so. They also want to rebuild the 15 Adventist churches that were totally destroyed and help repair the dozens of others that were damaged.

The union staff have each committed to giving one day’s wages to help. During these meetings the division executive committee voted that they would each give one day’s wages as well. Global Mission has agreed to send $10,000 and the General Conference is also making plans to send money.

Please pray for our members in Orissa, India. If you would like to help you can send your donation to Global Mission (see address at the end of this Musings) or give online at www.AdventistMission.org and mark it “Hope in Crisis # 9720”

20 YEARS OF TITHE

(Told by Pastor G Sharon, president of the West India Union, at the Southern Asia Division worship on 11/14/08)

Recently Pastor Sharon was attending a campmeeting in South Maharashtra, India when someone hurried up to him and said he was needed over at the ladies meeting. Pastor Sharon hurried over and found a family that had just arrived at the campmeeting.

The family was so excited to have finally found a group of Seventh-day Adventists. They said 25 years ago a pastor used to visit and study with them. They gave their hearts to Jesus and he gave them a Bible. But then he stopped coming and no one ever came again to visit them. They didn’t know where he had come from or how to find any other Seventh-day Adventists.

Times got hard. The family lost everything they owned and were reduced to almost begging. But they clung to the pastor’s words that if they stayed close to God He would never leave them. They kept reading the Bible and learning more and more as they read.

Then things got better for them little by little. But they still kept reading that Bible and worshipping God as a family. And they kept saving their tithe for when someone might come to visit them again.

Now a well-to-do family, they had decided to go find the church that pastor was from. It hadn’t been an easy search, but finally they had found someone who knew someone who said a group of Adventists were meeting in a certain place. And as they joyfully walked onto the grounds of the campmeeting they asked the first group they saw to call a pastor. When Pastor Sharon got to the meeting the family gave him the 20 years worth of tithe and offering they had been saving faithfully all these years.

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Homer Trecartin

Associate Secretary, General Conference

Director, Adventist Volunteer Service

Planning Director, Adventist Mission

General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring MD 20904

301-680-6077 (w)
301-332-5538 (m)

301-680-6635 (f)

Visit our websites at www.AdventistVolunteers.org

                            www.AdventistMission.org