News in Brief
“Only eternity will reveal what the singing of Del Delker has meant to the Advent movement around the world.” —Voice of Prophecy speaker and director H.M.S. Richards Sr., writing about well-known soloist Del Delker in 1955. Delker, who would go on to sing with the Voice of Prophecy ministry for several more decades, died at the age of 93 on January 31, 2018. Her strong contralto voice unabashedly shared Christ’s love with rapt audiences around the world.
Adventist Church Launches TV Channel in France Hope Channel recently partnered with the Franco-Belgian Union Conference to launch Hope Channel France. The Internet-based channel will broadcast from Paris and will focus on programming specifically for an audience often characterized by religious indifference. This is a sizable audience in France, existing between the 15 percent declared atheists and 10 percent practicing believers. 4
April 2018 AdventistWorld.org
“Adventist history is potentially very rich, very textured, very deep, and very wide. …It is not the history about just a dozen individuals.” —David Trim, director of the Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research at the Adventist world church headquarters during a gathering of Adventist historians in Silver Spring, Maryland, United States. Multiple historians and theologians presented papers about lesser-known Adventist pioneers who contributed significantly to the early movement.
Number of Adventist HealthCare Institutions Worldwide
441
Clinics and Dispensaries
180
Hospitals and Sanitariums
121
Nursing Homes & Retirement Centers
21
Orphanages and Children’s Homes
6,770 The number of patients served in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, by 3,300 volunteers who gave away US$40,608,800 in free medical, dental, vision, and other services on Christmas Day and December 26 and 27. Procedures at the Phoenix Convention Center included surgery, comprehensive dental, multiple medical services, vision exams, and free custom prescription glasses. Other services included prescriptions, legal services, haircuts, and free clothing.
“We are never self-made people, rather a web of humanity whose strength is determined by the strength of the weakest connections and the way we treat them.” —Dan Presecan, whose life as a child was dramatically impacted by a shoebox received from two 11-year-old British schoolgirls at the height of the 1990s Balkan crisis. The special box, a part of the United Kingdom’s Boxes for Bosnia Appeal, included gifts, a letter, photographs of the senders, and an address in case their unknown friend wanted to write back. Presecan, now serving as program director for ADRA in Central Asia, recently reconnected with one of the sisters on social media.