Polish ASI and Rosario Beach, WA.

Polish ASI

It isn’t hard to grasp the potential for the advancement of the gospel and for the support of the Seventh-day Adventist Church inherent in ASI. Recently, I was party to something truly impressive. I traveled to Poland in December (not recommended.) It was predictably humid, cold, snowy and gloomy grey. Be that as it may, I did have a wonderful opportunity to speak five times at the Polish ASI Convention.

(Ten times at Springs of Life.)

The convention was remarkable. ASI Poland has only sixteen members, yet they attracted 220 people to the meetings. They managed to host the people on a shoestring by using a church and a school for the venue and church member’s homes for accommodation. The food was excellent, even if we did have to sit on top of each other. The music was uplifting and best of all more than half of the congregation was young people. It seemed at times to be a combination of ASI and GYC. The bulk of the reports were from activity generated by young people, sponsored by ASI. Besides that, this small group raised more than 170,000 ZT (over $40,000) and you can’t help but see the power built into this organization, both for evangelizing the country and for the training of young witnesses.

Poland’s little ASI is so successful that the SDA Union in Ukraine sent a delegation to the convention to learn how they might establish an ASI organization in their country. Where the church allows ASI to harness the power of the business and lay people, wonderful things happen.

Rosario Beach, WA

It's Christmas!!! Well, it's actually Boxing Day. Fortunately, not one of the fourteen people here doesn't like his or her gift. We kind of set that up on Christmas Eve. We told stories of people in our past who were not happy with the gifts they were given. Everyone thought the stories funny and vowed to like whatever came their way. So they did and we had a wonderful time. 

We are spending Christmas at a place called Rosario Beach on the Pacific coast. Wonderful. Wet, yes, but wonderful anyhow. (The Rosario Beach Camp is owned by Walla Walla University.) In Cashmere we had snow to our eyebrows. Well, very low eyebrows. The kids spent every minute available to them sliding down off the mountain. They were soaked all the time, but apparently had great fun.  

Our next adventure will be at GYC in Seattle. The whole gang is going except Steve and the twins. Christina did her best to sign up people for GYC. Apparently, if you sign up so many people you get free registrations. So she signed up a bunch and would give the free registrations to those who couldn't afford to go. In the end, she managed to bring more than sixty people to GYC. 

The girls, Vanessa, Brianna, Christina, Elie, Natalie, and Dakota are singing at GYC. They do a fantastic job of it. (Check out Angie's blog for pictures of our Rosario experience.) 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.