On Oct. 27, 2023, all nine unions and the Guam-Micronesia Mission of the North American Division shared at vespers as part of the division’s year-end meeting. Each talked about how the Lord is moving in their territories. 

Music was also part of the program; Anika Anderson, Gilda Roddy, and Wynona Preston led song service to welcome the Sabbath, including the year’s theme song, “I’ll Say Yes.” Twice during the presentations, Pedro Dominguez III and Jay Jesús shared worship through music; Dominguez singing and Jesús on guitar. Their first piece was called “The Table.”

“No matter what we’re doing or how we’re doing it, God has a place for us at his table,” Dominguez said in his introduction. 

Adventist Church in Canada 

Paul Llewellyn, president, shared that the Adventist Church in Canada is developing a program to mentor and coach younger ministers and teachers into leadership. They are also working hard to get Hope Channel Canada off the ground, which plans to launch fully in March 2024.

“We have such a vast nation with small, difficult-to-reach communities all over the place,” Llewellyn stated. “We hope this will allow us to get the word of God out to all of Canada.”

Llewellyn also shared they are using ADRA Canada to train churches to become more integrated into their communities. “We want to make ADRA more relevant to our church members and make our churches more relevant to their communities,” said Steve Matthews, executive director of ADRA Canada, via video.

Mid-America Union

In a video, Eduardo Jacobo, Hispanic coordinator for Minnesota Conference, explained an initiative they tackled via partnership with several other church entities in 2023: To hold evangelistic series in every single church across the conference.

Esperanza Minnesota saw every Hispanic ministries coordinator across the union preaching for the campaign. As a result, nearly 120 individuals were baptized.

“The success of this campaign has encouraged our churches greatly,” Minervino Labrador, Jr., vice president for multilingual ministries for the NAD, said in the video. “Forward we go, together in mission.”

Columbia Union

Rubén Ramos, VP for multilingual ministries for the union, shared stories of significant growth, particularly in New Jersey Conference — where they have baptized people every Sabbath for over 150 weeks straight — and Ohio Conference — where “they made an impossible dream a reality,” he said. 

Their goal was to bring 2023 people to Christ, and the conference’s 13,000 members exceeded that number. “Additionally,” Ramos continued, “in a special festival of church planting, 25 congregations were organized in a single weekend. This has never happened in our division before.”

A story from Summersville, West Virginia, brought tears to listener’s eyes as, through a video, they heard how a man adamant against church was brought to God when he overheard his granddaughter singing a Christian song.

North Pacific Union

Jim John, Oregon Conference pastor, shared the story of a woman who drove past the NPUC headquarters on I-5 every day for months, wondering what the Adventist church was.

“She began to explore, ending up at our church and becoming part of our community group two years ago,” John said. She was baptized in March and began serving as church secretary shortly after. 

Ken Norton, Montana Conference pastor, shared the story of a pastor who agreed to fill in at a neighboring Methodist church when they lost their pastor. They asked him to preach on biblical prophecy, and he warned them it would conflict with Methodist teachings. They said that was fine: “Preach from the Bible, and we’ll decide if it’s true or not.”

Norton shared, “When he finished the sermon, ‘Saturday to Sunday,’ the congregation marched out to their sign and changed it from ‘Sunday services’ to ‘Saturday services.’”

As of this report, three have been baptized, and up to 11 members are attending weekly on Sabbath. On Monday, Oct. 30, the Methodist church will hold a special meeting to vote on giving their property to the Adventist church.

Atlantic Union 

Representatives, including Pierre Omeler, president, spoke about a project on which they’d partnered with the Southern Union to draw people to Jesus. Ron Smith, president of the Southern Union and evangelist for this effort, said they struggled to find a suitable location and ended up in a tent — which he hadn’t done for 30 years.

“The Lord moved, and we were blessed with more than 250 baptisms,” Smith commented.

All six conferences within the union focused on evangelism and community outreach in 2023, adding nearly 5,000 members. 

Future goals for the union include continuing to reach their most secular communities; involving every group, company, and church in evangelism; reviving Adventist education on the campus of former Atlantic Union College; increasing digital evangelism; and training young adults for service.

Lake Union Conference

“There are great things happening in every single one of our conferences, and I could share extraordinary testimonies with you all night,” Elden Ramirez, executive secretary, commented. The video he chose to share, he said, encompassed all that is happening within their territory in one story.

The video highlighted the story of the Kwiatkowski family, members of the Houghton Lake Church in Prudenville, Michigan. Though Brandon and Constance had drifted as far as possible from God, the sudden early arrival of their first child brought them back. Begging God to bring them all through the delivery safely, Brandon promised to devote his life to the Lord if they survived.

The baby was born healthy, but the doctor said if they hadn’t come in that day, he wouldn’t have survived. “That was it,” Brandon shared. “I said, ‘God, I’m yours.’” 

For years they struggled for years to find a church which matched their new beliefs, and then they stumbled across a low-quality video from Houghton Lake Church. Though the sound was hard to hear, the video talked about Sabbath and the health message, and they knew it was their church. They’re now members, and their sons attend Adventist school.

Pacific Union Conference 

Brad Newton, president, and Alberto Ingleton, vice president for Hispanic Ministries, shared about an evangelism series they presented at El Camino a Cristo, a church in Huntington Park, for which Newton was the speaker and Ingleton interpreted. 

Despite meetings being held on weeknights when attendees contended with work and traffic, people continued to come. The church was full, and by the end of the series, there were 90,000 livestream viewers, with many writing in to engage with the church and speakers. Twenty-three were baptized, and eight more committed.

“It is a privilege, an honor, and a blessing to go to a church where the Lord has already been active,” stated Ingleton. “We came simply to be participants in what the Holy Spirit was already doing, and we enjoyed watching our heavenly father transform people for the kingdom of God.”

Southwestern Union

Texas has three of the top 10 biggest cities in the U.S., pointed out Carlos Craig, president. “The need is great,” he added. This year they held several evangelistic series in Houston and the Rio Grande Valley, resulting in more than 600 baptisms together. The conference also has a broadcast van, allowing them to travel anywhere and broadcast live, maximizing their impact.

A pastor in Albuquerque, New Mexico, began holding Bible studies at a local high school, with 90 students signing up. Twenty have been baptized so far. Oklahoma Conference brought in an evangelism trainer this year to train both pastors and church members.

“We are looking forward to even more great things,” Craig commented.

Southern Union Conference

Ron Smith, president, said the union has focused on the NAD approach to ministry: “Mentorship, Media, Multiply.” The union’s 2024 focus is “Equipping believers; evangelizing unbelievers.”

More than 9,000 individuals have joined the church in the union this year; Smith says at the top of every agenda at every meeting in every department is evangelism. 

“The church is not a preservatory for pickled saints, nor a convalescent home for sick soldiers,” he said. “The church is not merely a waiting station for those who quest to sprout wings and halos to be launched into glory. The church has a job to do … and we’re concerned not only with salvation, but starvation. Not only with holiness, but homelessness. Not only Christ, but also the [drug] epidemic in our communities ...”

Smith closed his presentation with a video called “Around the Union in 180 Seconds,” with quick statements about what’s been happening in each conference.

Guam-Micronesia Mission

From end to end, the GMM is a bit farther apart than New York to Los Angeles, and yet all the landmass put together is only about the size of Jacksonville, Florida. There are 96 islands, two-thirds of which are yet to be reached, and across the territory are 21 different languages.

“It’s very easy to underestimate the unique challenges we face,” Matthew Kirk, president, stated. “For example, there is one church in our territory which has not been visited by a pastor in over 30 years, and I haven’t figured out yet how to make that happen so we can reset the clock.”

Despite these challenges, the church is active across the mission. They are resurrecting club ministries and hosting baptismal classes for young adults, VBS programs, evangelistic campaigns, and depression and anxiety recovery programs. They are also working on a partnership with Adventist World Radio to create an AM radio station to reach 70,000 people in Chuuk and Yap.

“We haven’t yet figured out an effective way to reach those people, so we’re looking at any and every opportunity,” Kirk said.

He closed with a powerful story of a last-minute miracle following the aftermath of a typhoon that knocked out power a mere 24 hours prior to Kirk’s presentation. Out of fuel and no access to more, unable to start the other, older generator on the clinic property, four people stood in the wind and rain at 1 a.m. praying in helpless resignation. 

As they prayed, a fuel delivery truck pulled in, having turned two driveways early for his destination. When the driver asked them what they were doing outside, they explained, and the driver simply said, “Well, I’m here; I might as well fill you up.”

Recommitment

G. Alexander Bryant, NAD president, closed the vespers program with prayer and a statement. “If you don’t believe evangelism exists in North America, you don’t know what’s going on here,” he said. “The Lord will use anything — even a bad video. I heard recently someone was baptized because they found a tract stuck to the bottom of their shoe with chewing gum.”

In his prayer, Bryant said, “Tonight we stand to recommit ourselves and our lives to you to … share the love of Christ so those who are in darkness might experience the joy of salvation.”

— Becky St. Clair writes from Angwin, California.