Hello, I am Gina Wahlen
from the general conference office of the Adventist Mission
and I would like to ask you a question:
What is one thing that we've been doing
at Seventh-day Adventist for more than one hundred years,
wherever we are, that bring us together as a church family?
Through this one thing, thousands of good things had happened.
Boats have been launched, people have been healed,
souls have been saved, schools have been built,
and lives have been changed.
That one thing started at 1886 when the general conference
promoted the first church wide Sabbath School mission project.
Building the mission boat named the Pitcairn
to sail to the tiny Island in the South Pacific.
Working together, young and old, raised $12,000
for this first Sabbath school mission project.
Following the Pitcairn project
Sabbath school mission offerings continued to increase.
On Sabbath, January 6, 1912 Sabbaht school members
were introduced to a new plan through a small eight page pamphlet,
that would later become known as the Sabbath School "Missions Quarterly".
On the cover page it read:
"Our Sabbath-school offerings have increased so splendidly,
that it is thought we may now have a special object
for which we may set apart the gifts of one Sabbath in each quarter.
The General Conference Committee has voted to allow us
to select the last Sabbath in each quarter,
as a day when we may donate to a special object."
And that continues today through the 13th Sabbath Mission Offering.
This special offering really pulls us together as a world church.
It is a specific way in which we can help each other
and learn from each other.
You know, a years or so ago, I was in South Korea
where I met a lady by the name of Mrs. Shin.
Mrs. Shin had a unique sense of mission.
When her teenager daughter decided she no longer wanted to go to church
because there were no other teens there,
Mrs. Shin came up with a great plan: pancakes!
She made hundreds of them, thousands of them
and set up shop right across the street from a local high school,
where she served them to hungry teena but she did much more than that.
When the kids would come buy pancakes from her,
she would befriend them, talk to them, get to know them.
She invited them to her home,
she got them involved in outreach projects,
she fed them, she gave them Bible studies,
and can you believe it, she planted a church using pancakes!
And one of our Thirteen Sabbath Mission Offering projects,
was to help provide a new building for this new church plan.
Then can you imagine how amazed I was a year later,
when I was in Papua New Guinea to see Mrs. Shin!
Well, it wasn't exactly Mrs. Shin,
it was a picture of Mrs. Shin making pancakes
and that picture was on a poster promoting the Thirteen Sabbath Offering.
Here we were, in a little church, in a garbage dump community
where people have very, very little.
They literally live off of the garbage dump
and yet, they were willing to take what little they had
to help support some kids in their mission in South Korea.
That's powerful, that's togetherness,
that's the Thirteen Sabbath Offering.
This special mission offering has been uniting the church
through giving, for more than 100 years.
I want to encourage you, if you haven't already done so,
to harness the power of mission and mission giving
and specifically mission giving through the Thirteen Sabbath Offering.
Be sure that the churches and institutions in your area
are receiving the mission Quarterly and the mission Spotlight DVDs
from our office of Adventist Mission.
This resources are filled with inspiring stories
of how God is working right now
through His people, to accomplish His mission.
and bringing His church together around the world.
In addition to the hard copies, both the Quaterlies and the DVD's
are available for downloading from our website at:
www. AdventistMission.org
and we also have mission apps available.
If you haven't done so yet,
I hope you join us in this wonderful plan of togetherness,
supporting our brothers and sisters around the world doing God's mission
through the Thirteen Sabbath Offering.
Thank you so much.