President of West Indies
Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
on the occasion of the
Day of Prayer, Sabbath,
August 1, 2009
Dear Fellow believers:
Today we observe a “Day of
Prayer for the Nation” (Jamaica), because we believe that the
effectual, fervent, persistent prayer of God’s people will receive His full
attention.
This year, we pray against the
looming backdrop of the global financial crises, the menacing crime,
violence and moral decay, and the need for a continued focus on the Church’s
mission to give hope to a world that needs to turn to God. We have an
opportunity to remind ourselves and our nation of the wonders of prayer.
All over the world each day,
persons go to very far extent to look better; millions are spent each day
for person to feel better. The drug industry thrives on person’s deep desire
to feel good about themselves. Many Christian go from day to day burdened
and making it obvious on their faces. Many individuals on this miserable
planet end their own lives because they cannot feel or realize the change
they so desperately desire. The Lord would have us know that He is available
to hear our faintest call and that He will stand by us in our moment of
need.
God made Israel a promise which
we must claim for Jamaica. If we would turn from doing wickedness and give
our lives to God, He will hear our prayers and He will heal our country. We
need to fulfil our side of that contract. We who believe in the power of
prayer and the ability of God to reconcile us to Himself, must petition His
throne ceaselessly on behalf of our nation.
Prayer addresses the emotional
needs. In prayer you can feel His presence near you and His arm around you.
Prayer addresses physical needs, for God will supply all our needs according
to His riches in Glory. Prayer speaks to our need to communicate because in
Jesus we have One who is never tired to hear His children expressing their
needs to Him for themselves and for their fellow citizens.
Ellen White in her book, Steps
to Christ, noted that the darkness of the evil one encloses those who
neglect to pray, and the whispered temptations of the enemy entice them to
sin, because they do not make use of the privileges that God has given them
in the divine appointment of prayer. She questioned why the sons and
daughters of God are reluctant to pray, when prayer is the key in the hand
of faith to unlock heaven's storehouse, which is full of treasures. (p. 93)
It is my hope that as we unite
in prayer today, the Spirit of the One who never fails will be upon us, and
will heal and restore that which the enemy has wounded and stolen.
May God
bless us abundantly as we worship today, and may Jamaica Land we love, be
transformed as a result of the intercession of God’s people on behalf of our
beautiful country and its leaders.
It
is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Sandra (Holland)
Pearson. Mrs. Pearson, wife of Pastor Walter Pearson, passed away
Wednesday morning, July 29th. Mrs. Pearson faithfully served as the Director
of Public Service Ministries and Associate Field Services Director for the
Breath of Life Ministries along side her husband who serves as the
Director/Speaker. Please continue to keep the Pearson/Holland family in your
prayers.
Brendon Albury to Speak at the North
Bahamas Conference Youth Gospel Extravaganza -
"Total Surrender"
Under the theme "Total Surrender,"
the North Bahamas Conference will hold its Youth Gospel Extravaganza with
featured speaker Brendon Albury, a fourth year ministerial student at
Antillean University in Puerto Rico. The series of youth meetings will be
held at the Freeport Seventh-day Adventist Church, Beachway and Gambier
Drive in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas, from August 1 - 8, 2009.
In fact, the Youth Extravaganza
will run from this coming Saturday at 7: 30 nightly. Special
features will include dramatization, youth counseling, inspirational singing
and powerful presentations from the Word of God. All are invited!
Brendon Albury, 23, is the third
son to Mrs. Ann Albury and the late Pastor Keith D. Albury. June
23 to August 1, 2008, he conducted two evangelistic meetings in the
Democratic Republic Congo, Central Africa, where 112 persons were
baptized. Brendon enjoys reading, exercising, beaching, and
nature walks when he is not studying or preaching. He returns to
Antillean University in August to complete his final year.
Star running back Rachelle Pecovsky-Bentley
puts God before gridiron.
An Adventist Who Chooses
God Over Football
By Dave McKenna. Taken from
Washington
City Paper online news Jul. 23 - 29, 2009 (Vol. 29, #30)
Rachelle
Pecovsky-Bentley, a Seventh-day Adventist football
player.
As the sun sets on her football career with
this weekend’s Sup-Her Bowl game, Rachelle Pecovsky-Bentley has been
taking a lot of time checking out the sunsets. Well, the D.C. Divas’
retiring star checked out what time the sun sets, anyway. She can tell
you without hesitation, for example, when sundown took place on July 11 in
Massachusetts, site of the Divas’ last-second, come-from-behind thriller win
over the Boston Militia that earned the Divas a trip to the IWFL’s
championship game.
“It wasn’t until 8:22,” Pecovsky-Bentley tells
me. And that explains why she didn’t play at all in the semifinals game. So
had the Divas lost, Pecovsky-Bentley’s run as a player would have ended with
her not even in uniform. But, perhaps with some divine assistance, a
teammate returned a kickoff 85 yards with just 40 seconds left in the game
for the win.
So Pecovsky-Bentley lives to play another game.
Well, another half-game, anyway.
The tale of what will be her 10th and final
season in women’s tackle football goes like this: Pecovsky-Bentley’s a
Seventh-day Adventist. Adventism calls for followers to honor the Sabbath
from sunset on Fridays through sunset on Saturdays. That means honoring God,
not running for daylight on a football field. Divas home and road
games are played on Saturdays and typically have kickoff times of either 6
p.m. or 7 p.m.—or right in the Sabbath’s wheelhouse. The game days and
times have been the same since Pecovsky-Bentley joined the squad in 2006,
after starring in Philadelphia and Delaware, but she played alongside her
teammates and prayed later.
“In the past, quite simply, she let football
mean more than faith,” says Divas Coach Keith Howard. But during the
last preseason, Pecovsky-Bentley decided she was no longer willing to put
gridiron before God. She went to Howard and told him she would be of no use
to the squad, because her beliefs would cause her to miss too many training
camp workouts and games.
By then, Pecovsky-Bentley had long proven her
devotion to the Divas. And the coach wasn’t quite ready to let his star give
up the game. “So we made a deal,” she says. “I’d honor God and play
football.”
She’d grown up the eldest of three daughters of
a football-loving father outside Philadelphia and was very athletic in high
school and college. Her jock résumé while at nearby Ursinus, an NCAA
Division III school, includes perhaps the oddest combo of honors ever found:
“I was nationally ranked in both the balance beam and the shot put,” she
says. Take that, Yang Yilin! (Pecovsky-Bentley was Centennial
Conference shot-put champion four years in a row and still holds the school
and league records in the event with a toss of 45 feet,
one-and-three-quarter inches in 1994.)
After a few years of flag football in
Philly-area leagues, she started playing tackle football with the
Philadelphia Belles in that team’s inaugural season of 2001, leading the
squad to the league championship that year. In 2006, she moved to Newport
News, Va., to be near the man she would marry. She wasn’t near ready to give
up the game, however. The Divas were not the closest women’s football team
to Newport News—there were a couple of fledgling female squads in the
Tidewater region—but Pecovsky-Bentley knew that D.C., where undefeated
regular seasons were the norm, had perhaps the best organization in the
game.
So through an entire preseason and
regular-season schedule, Pecovsky-Bentley commuted to Divas practices in
Upper Marlboro on weekdays, then again to the games on the weekends. And she
did it all, as the cliché goes, for the love of the game: The Divas players
and coaches are technically a professional team and by league rules can be
paid, but none are.
“That was 178 miles each way, at least three
days a week,” she says. “It seems crazy to me now that I did that. But I
wasn’t ready to stop playing.” With the time and effort came glory.
She rushed for 186 yards and three TDs in the 2006 Sup-Her Bowl, good enough
to win the MVP of the Divas’ first and thus far only championship. The
performance earned her a blurb in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in
the Crowd” section. She’s now the Divas’ second-leading rusher of all time.
Her husband, who is in the military, was
transferred to the D.C. area a year later, and Pecovsky-Bentley stuck with
the Divas. But earlier this year, after weighing her spiritual and athletic
situations, she decided to call it quits and went to Howard to let him know.
He wouldn’t have it. So Howard and Pecovsky-Bentley came to an
agreement—spelled out in an e-mail to each other—that she wouldn’t be
required to attend any practice or portion of a game that conflicted with
the Sabbath. And the team wouldn’t hold her religious observations against
her.
“I said, ‘Let’s see if we can work this out,’”
Howard says. “I wanted her to put faith first, and stay with the team. And
we agreed that if ever there was any question about what she should do, we’d
open up that e-mail and talk about it.” Every week during
the season, Pecovsky-Bentley would consult the sunset charts and let the
games start without her. She’d wait off-site and pray, then the moment the
sun went down, she’d put on the uniform and get to the field.
“It’s like a superhero showing up when Rachelle
would arrive at the field,” says Rich Daniel, the Divas’ general manager.
“That’s a big lift to the team.”
“They really didn’t need me for many games this
year,” laughs Pecovsky-Bentley. “By the time I showed up, we had the games
won.”
But there’s always a chance her talents and
experience could tilt a game. So Pecovsky-Bentley stayed with the team, and
things went smoothly for all concerned as the Divas notched another
undefeated season.
Things came to a head, though, in the semifinal
game in New England, with the kickoff scheduled for 6 p.m. and sunset, as
Pecovsky-Bentley memorized, more than two hours later. Coach and player
consulted the e-mail they’d written to each other and decided that she
wouldn’t even make the trip with her team.
“That was tough,” she says. “But we looked at
what might happen, and the best-case scenario would have meant I’d come in
with about two or three minutes to play.”
As it turned out, the game against the Militia
indeed hinged on the final few moments. Pecovsky-Bentley says she didn’t
even listen to the game online or otherwise try to keep up with what was
going on until the sunset. “If I was going to do that, I would have just
gone to the game. But I wanted to honor God,” she says. “But around 8:30, I
was texting and calling like crazy.”
She found out from her calls and texts that her
teammates were celebrating an amazing finish—“an ESPN Classic game,” says
Howard—that puts them in the final.
Thanks to the Miracle in Massachusetts,
Pecovsky-Bentley will be clock-watching one more time. Kickoff is scheduled
for 7 p.m. CDT. She thinks she’s going to be able to honor her savior and
still get in for about a half.
Vera Binnie, a Teenager at 97
Vera Binne at age 97.
Photo taken Sabbath morning, July 18, 2009, at the New
Englerston Seventh-day Adventist Church, Nassau, in a
service honoring her. She often says "Sometimes I
forget my age. I feel like a teenager." She is
truly a vibrant force. She still plays the piano every
Sabbath morning in Sabbath School and cares for her garden.
Vera and one of her many plants
Dedication of the Lovely Bay
Seventh-day Adventist Church
The Lovely Bay Seventh-day
Adventist Church, Acklins Island, was dedicated on Sunday,
July 19, 2009. More information and photos coming
soon.
The following videos are courtesy of You Tube
Enjoy the
Charles D. Brooks Classics
Clips taken from You Tube.
The Web Servant thought you would like to refresh your memory of one
of the great preachers in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Pastor
Charles D. Brooks.
Pastor Alvin Kibble Was On The Southwest Airlines
Flight
Pastor
Kibble, an Adventist pastor in North America, was on the
flight (July 14, 2009) that made an emergency landing
because of a 1½-foot hole in the fuselage Monday. He was
seated at one of the exit rows and was instructed to block
any panicky passengers from trying to leave the plane in
flight. Afterward he was interviewed by CNN, FOX, NBC and
the Hope Channel. Embedded clip from myfox.com
Nassau Pathfinder
Marching Band Wins The Battle of the Bands
More than 1500 excited
Adventists and people from the community showed up at the Queen Elizabeth
Sports Center for the Independence Celebrations' "Battle of the Bands" held
on Saturday night, July 11, 2009. Four youth bands participated: Bahamas
Conference Pathfinder Marching Band, North Bahamas Conference Marching Band,
Farm Road Marching Band, and Kemp Road United Marching Band. The North
Bahamas Conference Pathfinder Band traveled from Freeport, Grand Bahama to
participate in the Battle of the Bands.
The Bahamas Conference
Pathfinder Marching Band is a popular, respected and disciplined youth band
that performed during the National Independence Festival Celebrations held
on Thursday night, July 9, 2009 on Fort Charlotte, Nassau. They thrilled the
crowed of more than 30,000 people with their skill and precision marching.
James Catalyn, poet, writer, comedian, and national activist said, "It was
thrilling to watch the Pathfinders. They were simply the best." Photos
coming soon.
National Fun Walk On
Sunday for Sabbath Keepers
The
National Fun Walk on Sunday, July 12th is planned especially for Sabbath
Keepers. The main walk is on Saturday (July 11) cannot
involve Sabbath keepers. Last year (2008) for the first time the
Independence Celebration Organizing Committee had two walks, the second one
was on Sunday to accommodate Sabbath keepers. Hundreds came out. [See
last year's photos]
Come and join us Sunday morning, July 12 at
6:00 a.m. at the Kendal Isaacs Gym. The walk continues to Clifford
Park. Free water and fruits will be available.
Breaking Church News
Adventist World News from the Adventist
Review
July
7, 2009
INTENSE STORM HITS TENTS: One of many worship tents that
were flattened in the storm’s wake. [Photo: George Johnson,
Jr.]
Union Treasurer Challenge
Colporteurs to Remain Steadfast
Lebert McLean is 2008 Champion for
the West Indies Union
News taken from West
Indies Union Conference
Website.
July 3, 2009
Lebert McBean,
leading Colporteur for 2008 in the West Indies Union
Conference.
The West Indies Union Colporteur
Certification, which started on June 22, came to a climax on Sabbath
June 27, 2009, at Camp Verley, St. Catherine,
Jamaica with a call for Colporteurs to remain steadfast during these harsh
economic times.
The call was made by Miss Carmelita Findlay,
Treasurer of West Indies Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, who was
presenting the closing message to more than 120 full-time Colporteurs. She
admonished them to “never give up”.
“Many times we give up and opt for easier options,” said Miss Findlay.
“Sadly we discovered that there are no easy options and as a result we
become discouraged and lose the thread that connected us to our dreams. For
those who are contemplating such an action, don’t give up. You are not
alone. You are supervised by angels of God. The time is hard but it is not your work. You are agents of God to publish
the good news of His coming Kingdom. People will discourage you, but keep
your eyes in the direction where you first saw the light. You are working
with the God of the impossibilities.”
Colporteurs Recognized
During the closing
exercises, there was an Awards Ceremony where the various regional champions
and the Union champion were recognized for excelling in book sales. For the
year 2008, the West Indies Union champion is Mr. Lebert McLean of the
Bahamas Conference, and the champion region is the Central Jamaica
Conference.
Miss Carmelita Findlay,
Treasurer of the West Indies Union Conference of Seventh-day
Adventists
Mr. Lebert McBean, West
Indies Union Conference champion Colporteur for 2008,
accepts his award from Mrs. Sandra Gayle, Education Director
of West Indies Union Conference.
The one-week training for Colporteurs was the
first phase of a three-year Colporteurs’ Certification Programme organized
by the West Indies Union Conference Publishing Ministry; in collaboration
with the Publishing Ministry of the General Conference and the
Inter-American Division of Seventh-day Adventists. The programme covered
thirty-six hours of training at the introductory level, in Philosophy of
Literature Ministry, Publishing Policy, Christian Ethics and Salesmanship.
There was also a thirty-six hour basic level training, which included;
Adventist History l, Personal Evangelism, Health Evangelism, and
Salesmanship II.
Copyright (c)
August 2000 Bahamas Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
It
is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Sandra (Holland)
Pearson. Mrs. Pearson, wife of Pastor Walter Pearson, passed away
Wednesday morning, July 29th. Mrs. Pearson faithfully served as the Director
of Public Service Ministries and Associate Field Services Director for the
Breath of Life Ministries along side her husband who serves as the
Director/Speaker. Please continue to keep the Pearson/Holland family in your
prayers. 
or
Kibble, an Adventist pastor in North America, was on the
flight (July 14, 2009) that made an emergency landing
because of a 1½-foot hole in the fuselage Monday. He was
seated at one of the exit rows and was instructed to block
any panicky passengers from trying to leave the plane in
flight. Afterward he was interviewed by CNN, FOX, NBC and
the Hope Channel. Embedded clip from myfox.com
The
National Fun Walk on Sunday, July 12th is planned especially for Sabbath
Keepers. The main walk is on Saturday (July 11) cannot
involve Sabbath keepers. Last year (2008) for the first time the
Independence Celebration Organizing Committee had two walks, the second one
was on Sunday to accommodate Sabbath keepers. Hundreds came out. [
