Participants:
Series Code: GMS
Program Code: GMS001106B
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00:09 Welcome back.
00:11 Next up, we travel to Northern Italy 00:13 to the Waldensian Valley and a Global Mission Project. 00:18 I'm here in Northern Italy with Gabriele, 00:21 who is a global mission pioneer up here. 00:24 Can you tell us a little bit about where we are? 00:27 And there's historical significance to this area. 00:30 Can you tell us a little bit about that? 00:32 Yes, we are in Torre Pellice, 00:35 which is in the heart of the Waldensian Valleys 00:37 in North Western Italy, 00:39 and this place has a great significance 00:42 for the history of Protestants in general 00:45 and also for us as Seventh-day Adventists. 00:48 We know that in past centuries a group of people here 00:53 lived by the Word of God 00:55 and they preached the gospel in many areas of Europe. 00:58 They trained missionaries here in a school 01:01 and they sent them out 01:03 and they would go to universities, 01:04 and different parts of Europe so spreading the gospel. 01:08 And they were so persecuted because of their faith, 01:11 and it's also significant place for us, 01:14 'cause of the first baptism 01:15 outside of the United States of America 01:18 was done here in Torre Pellice, 01:20 and was a lady baptized in 1865. 01:25 Wow. That's incredible. 01:27 And then of course Ellen White visited here several times 01:30 and wrote about the Waldensians in some of her books, 01:33 but what are you doing here as a global mission pioneer, 01:35 it seems like the first baptism outside of the US was here, 01:39 Adventists have had a long presence here. 01:42 So why are you here? 01:43 Yes, well, Torre Pellice Church was one of the first churches 01:47 established in Italy, and right now, 01:50 actually we have a small church about 30 people in attendance. 01:55 And the thing is we don't have Adventist presence 02:00 here in the valleys. 02:01 Basically, all the members come from outside the valleys 02:06 except for a three of us we live in the church building. 02:09 So even if we do have a church, 02:13 there's also the need of planting church 02:16 of people coming from the valley. 02:18 That's why the division started this project 02:23 in the Waldensian Valleys 02:24 to reach Waldensian population here in this place. 02:28 Okay. 02:30 Now, you are doing certain activities. 02:33 What are you doing to try to reach out 02:35 to the community here in the valley? 02:37 Well, we started having some small groups, 02:41 which are not actually in the valleys 02:44 but we go to church members and their homes, 02:47 and so we have some contacts and some interests 02:50 that are not from the valley 02:52 but for the valley itself we run health expo, 02:55 we had some public meetings last year, 02:58 because we just started last year 03:00 and currently we're holding Daniel seminar. 03:03 So we're going through the Book of Daniel chapter by chapter, 03:06 and we're seeing a good interest, 03:08 quite a good number of people is coming to the meeting. 03:11 So we're trying to rekindle this faith in the Waldensians, 03:17 the faith that their fathers had, 03:19 they were students of the Bible, 03:21 students of Bible prophecy, 03:22 so we're kind of trying to awake them to, 03:27 to the heritage they... 03:29 that was left to them by their fathers. 03:32 Okay. 03:34 Now, we're in the middle-... 03:35 the square in the middle of town here, 03:36 and this is where you had the health expo, correct? 03:38 Yeah. Yes. 03:39 Correct. Okay. 03:40 So what was the result of that? Didn't any... 03:43 Was there a lot of people that came, 03:44 were they interested, 03:46 and do they know anything about Adventists? 03:48 Yeah. 03:49 Some people do use a small village because 03:51 and so we know each other, but we had a good response, 03:54 over 70 people came for health expo 03:58 and yeah, and... 04:00 So we're, trying to meet the people's needs 04:04 and the interesting thing about this area is that 04:06 you can talk about spiritual topics without, you know, 04:10 being look as a weird person because, you know, 04:13 there's a lot of churches even if it's a small village. 04:16 You have many denominations here in the valleys 04:19 so there's a good Protestant presence here. 04:22 And so you can, you can speak about 04:26 spiritual topics very, very freely. 04:28 It's not uncommon here to speak about God. 04:32 And even though there's not a strong Adventist 04:34 present in the church. 04:35 We have a lot of Adventists who come here. 04:37 Yes. 04:38 To visit all the historic sites. 04:40 If you could ask people around the world, 04:44 to pray for something here, 04:46 what would you ask them to pray for? 04:48 That's an interesting question. 04:51 I remember Ellen White was here as you, 04:53 as you mentioned before, 04:54 and she actually wrote some interesting things 04:57 about these place. 04:59 She said, "That the light of a third angel 05:02 would shine in these valleys." 05:04 And she said, she saw a disturbance in the valleys 05:07 and people coming to distrust their own teachers, 05:12 and she said that many would hear of a truth. 05:14 So we start seeing it happening. 05:19 We have for example a Waldensian man 05:21 come into our church every Sabbath, 05:24 is very dissatisfied with, with his own church. 05:27 He's seen... 05:29 started seeing things are not right with the Bible, 05:31 and so we started seeing the fulfilment of these words 05:35 with Ellen White's words. 05:36 So we would like to ask you to pray 05:39 that God could really awake in these people 05:43 the spirit of their old fathers 05:45 that they would really get on fire to study the Bible 05:49 as they did in the past. 05:52 Okay. 05:53 Now we visited one of the small group Bible studies 05:56 that you had last night. 05:57 I found it fascinating that you had Italian people, 06:02 but you also had people 06:03 from different countries of the world. 06:04 Yes. 06:06 It's amazing that we are global church 06:08 and the world is somewhat global today, people travel. 06:12 Can you just share some of the countries 06:14 represented there last night? 06:15 Yeah. 06:16 We had people from Bolivia, and from Moldova, 06:20 and then from Romania, from France, 06:25 from different countries and we do, 06:28 also in our small church, 06:29 we have many nationalities. 06:31 We have a lady from the Mauritius, 06:33 and so we do have lots of nationalities 06:37 and it's a really nice experience too 06:41 to see all the people coming together to worship one God. 06:45 Wonderful, Gabriele, 06:48 thank you so much for talking with us today, 06:51 and friends at home. 06:54 Those of you who support global mission, 06:55 you're helping to support people like Gabriele here 06:59 and many Global Mission Pioneers around the world. 07:03 And now, back to you Gary. 07:05 Next up, Gina Wahlen tells us the story 07:08 of the 13th Sabbath Offering. 07:11 Hello, I'm Gina Wahlen, 07:13 from the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. 07:16 And I'd like to ask you a question. 07:18 What is one thing that we've been doing 07:21 a Seventh-day Adventists for more than 100 years? 07:25 Wherever we are that brings us together as a church family 07:29 through this one thing 07:31 thousands of good things have happened. 07:33 Boats have been launched, people have been healed, 07:36 souls have been saved, schools have been built, 07:39 and lives have been changed. 07:42 That one thing started in 1886, 07:45 when the General Conference promoted 07:47 the first church wide Sabbath school mission project 07:51 building the mission about named the Pitcairn 07:54 to sail to the tiny island in the South Pacific. 07:57 Working together young and old raised $12,000 08:01 for this first Sabbath school mission project. 08:04 Following the Pitcairn Project, 08:06 Sabbath school mission offerings 08:08 continued to increase. 08:10 On Sabbath January 6th, 1912, 08:13 Sabbath school members were introduced 08:15 to a new plan through a small eight page pamphlet 08:20 that would later become known 08:21 as the Sabbath school missions quarterly. 08:24 On the cover page it read, 08:26 "Our Sabbath school offerings have increased so splendidly, 08:30 that it is thought we may now have a special object 08:33 for which we may set apart 08:35 the gifts of one Sabbath in each quarter. 08:38 The General Conference Committee 08:40 has voted to allow us 08:42 to select the last Sabbath in each quarter 08:45 as a day when we may donate to a special object." 08:49 And that continues today 08:51 through the 13th Sabbath mission offering. 08:54 This special offering really pulls us together 08:57 as a world church. 08:59 It's a specific way in which we can help each other 09:03 and learn from each other. 09:05 You know, a year or so ago, I was in South Korea, 09:09 where I met a lady by the name of Mrs. Shin. 09:12 Mrs. Shin, had a unique sense of mission. 09:17 When her teenage daughter decided, 09:19 she no longer wanted to go to church 09:21 because there were no other teens there. 09:23 Mrs. Shin came up with a great plan pancakes. 09:28 She made hundreds of them, thousands of them 09:31 and set up shop 09:33 right across the street from the local high school 09:36 where she sold them to hungry teens. 09:38 But she did much more than that. 09:41 When the kids would come to buy pancakes from her, 09:44 she would befriend them, talk to them, get to know them. 09:47 She invited them to her home, 09:49 she got them involved in outreach projects. 09:53 She fed them, she gave them Bible studies. 09:56 And can you believe it? 09:58 She planted a church using pancakes. 10:01 And one of our 13th Sabbath mission offering projects 10:04 was to help provide a new building 10:07 for this new church plant. 10:10 Then can you imagine how amazed I was a year later 10:14 when I was in a Papua New Guinea to see Mrs. Shin. 10:18 Well, it wasn't exactly Mrs Shin. 10:21 It was a picture of Mrs. Shin making pancakes, 10:25 and that picture was on a poster 10:27 promoting the 13th Sabbath offering. 10:30 Here we were in a little church in a garbage dump community, 10:35 where people have very, very little, 10:38 they literally live off of the garbage stop. 10:41 And yet, they were willing to take what little they had 10:45 to help support some kids in their mission in South Korea. 10:50 That's powerful, that's togetherness, 10:54 that's the 13th Sabbath offering. 10:57 This special mission offering has been uniting the church 11:01 through giving for more than 100 years. 11:04 I want to encourage you, if you haven't already done so 11:08 to harness the power of mission and mission giving. 11:12 And specifically mission giving to the 13th Sabbath offering. 11:17 Be sure that the churches and institutions in your area 11:20 are receiving the mission quarterly, 11:23 and the mission spotlight DVD's 11:25 from our Office of Adventist Mission. 11:28 These resources are filled with inspiring stories 11:31 of how God is working right now through His people 11:35 to accomplish His mission 11:37 and bringing His church together around the world. 11:41 In addition to the hard copies, 11:43 both the quarterlies and the DVD's 11:45 are available for downloading from our website 11:48 at www.adventistmission.org 11:53 and we also have mission apps available. 11:56 If you haven't done so yet, I hope you'll join us 11:59 in this wonderful plan of togetherness, 12:02 supporting our brothers and sisters around the world 12:06 doing God's mission through the 13th Sabbath offering. 12:10 Thank you so much. 12:24 Well, thanks so much for joining us on today's program. 12:27 I hope that you've been challenged and inspired 12:30 by what you've seen and heard. 12:32 People around the world, 12:33 from Papua New Guinea, to Italy, 12:36 to many places touched by the 13th Sabbath offerings, 12:40 people are responding to the light of God's love. 12:43 And I want to thank you for the part 12:44 that you're playing in that, 12:45 your prayers, your financial support, 12:48 and your personal involvement make all the difference. 12:51 Before we go, I have a special offer, 12:54 this may take you back in time to 12:55 when you were younger but the old money box, 12:59 a little reminder to give offerings, 13:01 and this is a 13th Sabbath Mission offerings money box. 13:05 You can use this at home to teach your children 13:08 about the importance of saving for a mission. 13:10 You can use it in your Sabbath schools 13:12 and youth groups wherever, 13:14 just as a symbol, as a reminder of the importance 13:17 to consistently and faithfully 13:19 support mission with our finances. 13:22 For Adventist Mission, I'm Gary Krause, 13:24 and I hope you can join me next time 13:26 right here on Global Mission Snapshots. |
Revised 2016-05-26