Adventist Life

Pastor Manny Vela went to the podium to speak. “When Pastor Jerry asked me to take the sermon today,” he began, “I didn’t know what to preach about. I had already preached the Christmas story from the perspective of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the Wise Men.”

He paused, then continued, “Then I remembered the donkey. I thought, I’ve never preached it from the perspective of the donkey! And since donkeys never say much, it would be a very short sermon . . .”

Vela did manage to fill his allotted time, however!

—Edna Regester, Boiling Springs, South Carolina

Did You Know?

The Israel Field reports a membership of nearly 900 members amid a population of 7.7 million. There are 13 Adventist congregations in the country. The Life and Peace Publishing House offers literature from its headquarters in Jerusalem. The Israel Field also offers several Bible correspondence schools. It is a neighbor to the Middle East and North Africa Union, which is made up of 20 countries. The borders of this union include Morocco to the west, Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, and Sudan to the south. The population of the region is about 500 million people.

The Middle East and North Africa Union is home to 220 cities that each have a population of more than 1 million people. The denomination operates Middle East University in Beirut, Lebanon, which was established in 1939. It is one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the country.

—information gathered from www.adventist.org/world-church

Photo

Brayden, our 3-year-old great-grandson, enjoys several books about Baby Jesus and was intensely interested in the wooden Nativity set. He played carefully with the individual characters and seemed to play most tenderly with Baby Jesus in the cradle. As his parents were packing the car to go visit family for Christmas, Brayden innocently but sincerely asked, “Mommy, are we going to Bethlehem?”

—Lois Bray, Thief River Falls, Minnesota

Sound Bite

“By patience the snail reached the ark.”

—Gideon Ngigi Kamau, commenting on a post on the Adventist Review Facebook page, November 6, 2014

“Believe it or not, you are already in His presence all the time.”

—Pastor Ron Nickerson, at the Keene Seventh-day Adventist Church in New Hampshire, August 16, 2014