23rd General Conference Session Special Report
Communication is a big priority in the Australasian Union Conference, where all the workers of the Union regularly meet by Skype to share their experiences in their successes and challenges.
Cooking, raw food, and health demonstrations are a highly successful way in which souls are being reached. Services offered to the community include blood pressure testing, blood sugar testing, fruit and vegetable juicing and many other activities.
Another missionary endeavor that this Union is using to try to reach people is through colporteur evangelism. Many encouraging experiences have been told by the young people after canvassing. They have also been blessed by the seminar given by the General Conference this quadrennium on sacred music. The climax of the event was a concert of sacred music presented before the public, where many guests attended.
The media department produces missionary-oriented video clips published on Facebook and YouTube.
A Righteousness by Faith Symposium brought ministers and Bible workers together to study and discuss about the vital topics related to the work of Jesus for humanity. Some were not able to attend in person, but joined via Skype conference call.
Seventeen students from five countries completed the Missionary School training program at Elim Heights and Schofields. The students were also assigned to preach in different churches in the New South Wales Field and even in the Melbourne churches—including to do home visitation and practical Bible studies.
By God’s grace, the South Pacific Union Mission was recently registered legally with the government of Vanuatu, where the headquarters are located and we have a membership of 100 souls.
The headquarters of the Fiji Mission Field is located in Suva, the capital city of Fiji, where a First Sabbath Offering will be gathered for a building to be constructed there. Our largest membership in the South Pacific Union Mission is in Papua New Guinea, where some 10 Filipino medical volunteers recently came to do some medical work. In the course of five days, 750 persons were served, benefitting most of our members as well as people outside our church. Services were rendered such as blood sugar tests, blood pressure tests, herbal medicine information, and distribution of herbal supplements. In addition, 500 kg of brown rice was distributed to our church members during the last day of the program. There was a successful colporteur seminar held here as well.
The work in the Solomon Islands is growing and funds are being raised to purchase land for a headquarters near the capital.
Faleasiu is the center of our work in the Samoan Mission Field, where a new church building was recently finished and dedicated to the Lord. Another property was donated for a second place of worship and interested souls have also been contacted in American Samoa.
A team of Fly and Build volunteers from Australia, Vanuatu, and French Polynesia went to Mare Island, New Caledonia to build the first SDARM church building in this island country. Donations from the First Sabbath Offering around the world and from the fund generated by the Mare local church made the construction possible from start to completion.
With its headquarters in Papeete, the French Polynesian Mission has a membership of 66 souls with one ordained elder and three young Bible workers who started their training in the Philippines and had additional training in Australia.
To update our missionaries, a seminar-type missionary school is ongoing in the three units in Indonesia. Several health expos and campaigns have been done there and the General Conference Welfare Department is making a feasibility study of producing herbal rubbing oil for massage to raise funds. There are new interests on the islands of Tagulandang and Kalimantan.
In South Korea, where our headquarters are located in a rural area, we have 128 members who are also actively supporting the work in Vietnam, and where, thankfully, religious intolerance has relaxed a little bit and home churches can be visited without fear. A farm with a house on it is the site of our first chapel there and the income of the farm can augment the financial needs of the Mission. By God’s grace, the work here is going forward.
The headquarters of our work in Japan is located in rural Saitama Prefecture. The vast majority of our members here are females and they are very active in livestreaming their programs every Sabbath, producing of CDs with doctrinal presentations, distributing literature, and giving health and cooking classes. Recently they gave some public meetings in Okinawa and it motivated them to continue the work because in every program, an average of 50 persons have attended and some now are undergoing Bible studies.
A Filipino medical team is planning to visit Laos before the end of this year to follow up the work. A Thailander who was just baptized into our church who speaks Mong (a language spoken in southern Laos) is being deployed to work there.
A few years ago, a brother from Portugal with his wife went to East Timor to establish the work in that country. The work there is slowly moving forward. Since the country speaks Portuguese, we can get some religious music and sermons from Brazil to operate a religious radio program. As of this writing, two interested persons are preparing for baptism.
Another country just visited during this quadrennium is the Kingdom of Tonga, where interest is growing and a permanent Bible worker will be sent to establish the work there.
Serious religious difficulties are being experienced in the People’s Republic of China. The publishing of the Bible was banned and those in the north are not allowed to conduct Bible studies, do missionary work openly or have public worship on Sabbath. The believers there need our prayers.
The headquarters of our work in the Philippines is located in Kabatang, Tiaong, Quezon Province, with a total membership of 1,441 souls. The Philippine Union has one primary school, a missionary school, and a publishing department.
It is our prayer that the Lord may continue to bless His work in the Pacific Rim!