Evangelistic meetings organized by Seventh-day Adventist students attending a public university in Zambia have resulted in the baptism of 71 fellow students.
Many of those baptized at Kwame Nkrumah University, Zambia’s largest teacher-training university with about 12,000 students, only learned about the biblical seventh-day Sabbath during Bible studies around the time of the two-week meetings, said Ephraim Mutoya Jr., director of public campus ministries for the Adventist Church’s Northern Zambia Union Conference.
“We praise God that many were knowing the Sabbath truth for the very first time but decided to follow Jesus,” said Mutoya, speaker for the Oct. 9-22 meetings titled, “Blessed Hope Bible Lectures.”
“When Jesus called them to follow Him, 71 responded positively and got baptized on Sabbath, Oct. 22,” he told the Adventist Review.
Adventist students organized the meetings and invited fellow students to attend at Kwame Nkrumah University in Kabwe, a town situated 85 miles (135 kilometers) north of the African country’s capital, Lusaka. The Adventist students worked under the auspices of Public Campus Ministries (PCM), an Adventist Church department that supports Adventist students studying at public universities and colleges.
“It was a blessed day for the baptismal candidates as each was presented with a certificate, Bible, and a book, When God Said Remember,”
“It was a blessed day for the baptismal candidates as each was presented with a certificate, Bible, and a book, When God Said Remember,” said Mutoya, who baptized the 71 students.
This was not the first evangelistic series organized by Adventist students from public universities. In August, students co-led an evangelistic series in Mpondwe, a predominantly Muslim city in Uganda, that resulted in 21 baptisms and a city street being named in the students’ honor.
The evangelistic initiatives are among youth retention efforts overseen by Jiwan Moon, director of public campus ministries for the Adventist world church. The PCM seeks to retain students and young professionals by mentoring them, kindling their missionary spirit, and then sending them out into the world to serve as Jesus’ hands and feet. In another initiative, the Adventist Church held this month its first annual Global Public Campus Ministries Weekend, a three-day event during which thousands of young people did good deeds on their campuses on Friday, worshipped and fellowshipped on Sabbath, and reached out to their communities on Sunday.
“The goal of PCM is to transform our young people — both students and young professionals — into being disciples of Jesus, empowering them to share the everlasting gospel, and sending them out into the world to baptize people in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” Moon said Friday.
Moon expressed joy about the 71 baptisms in Zambia and said public campus ministries encourages all new church members to share their faith with others.
“It is encouraging to see that public campus ministries is not only bringing new followers to Jesus but also equipping and empowering them to be missionaries who will change the world,” he said.
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