The passing quinquennium will go down in history as an exciting period in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Southern Africa. Evangelism has been a priority in the union's operation.

Southern Africa was the third area, after North America and Brazil, to launch an evangelistic campaign that was uplinked, and benefited the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. It was a time for the greatest excitement in the church in southern Africa. The Spirit of the Lord used the Jamaican lay evangelist Fitz Henry in a marvelous way. Pentecost 98, as the campaign was known, resulted in a baptism of 8,121 souls in the union and 23,000 in other divisions in Africa. The church grows much slower in the Southern Africa Union than it does in other parts of the continent, but in 1998 the percentage of membership increase was 8.51 and was second only to Southern Asia, which had an increase of 13.39. It is for this reason that we are preparing for another Pentecost 2000 in the month of September.

One of the biggest challenges that we face in the southern Africa Union is to unite people who have been separated for hundreds of years by government policies operating in the region. We have made some progress, but we have not yet attained our goal. In the southern area, along the Atlantic and the Indian oceans, we had three conferences for three racial groups, covering the same geographic territory. We have managed to put two racial groups together into one conference, and we are still negotiating to bring the third group in. In Namibia where we had two fields that were also largely divided along racial lines, we have merged into one field.

One of the exciting events in the passing quinquennium has been the attainment of conference status by two of our mission fields, namely Lesotho and Swaziland. We are now a union of seven conferences and one mission, which will soon be a conference.

Global Mission has played a significant role in opening up work in unentered areas. It is exciting to go to areas where there were no Seventh-day Adventists at all two years ago and find 50 members worshiping under the leadership of a Global Mission pioneer. There are many groups like that throughout our union that have sprung up as a result of Global Mission. A group that has attracted interest even from overseas is the San people. Historically the San were hunters and never built permanent residences. Modern governments that are trying to conserve nature do not allow them to live on hunting. Life becomes extremely difficult for them. We have found San people open to the message of the gospel.

With donations from Global Mission, we have been able to construct a mobile evangelistic truck that can be parked anywhere we want to hold a campaign.

The majority of our membership is in the country of South Africa, which after the apartheid era is in the process of democratization. This evolving democracy had to revamp educational policies, labor laws, welfare policies, etc. All those changes impact the church. We have had to restudy some of our policies in order to meet the demands of the state.

The church in the Southern Africa Union has a great future, because the laypeople are catching the vision. In such areas as Cape Town, Soweto, Windhoek, and other places, they organize and finance campaigns. All over our union, there are people working in conjunction with our Bible correspondence school and conducting Bible classes in prisons. Although the laws of the state have no room for proselytizing in prisons, yet the use of our Bible correspondence lessons has been approved. As a result of the activities of our laypeople, we have baptized hundreds of people in prisons.

A visit to a few of our churches will convince you that the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Southern Africa Union is a church of young people and women. In political circles the government has made big strides in addressing discrimination against women. Now it seems that the South African government has a higher percentage of women in the cabinet than any other country. The church is also addressing the need for women to be active in the church. Although it has made some progress, there is still a lot of work to be done. There will need to be a greater involvement of young people and women in critical decisions affecting the church in the next quinquennium.

We are grateful for the way the Lord has blessed His church in southern Africa during this passing quinquennium. We continue to pray for even greater blessing in the coming quinquennium.