Chesapeake Conference

As the 22-year-old mother of two tried to get her friendly, rambunctious, four-year-old daughter to sit still at the dinner table, her five-year-old son sat counting. He was doing pretty well. He almost made it to 100, when Luritz Parker, a member of Chesapeake Conference’s Atholton church in Columbia, Md., interrupted to hand them three clear sandwich bags filled with soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and wash cloths.

The images on Quang Ngo’s TV screen were graphic. It showed just how devastating an impact that Typhoon Haiyan had, not just on the landscape of the Philippines, but the also the people. This was how he ended up on the doorsteps of Allegheny East Conference’s Oxon Hill Filipino church in Oxon Hill, Md., toting some 1,000 T-shirts. “We saw the people suffering and it reminded me of our situation. My family and I escaped our country of Vietnam in a boat,” he said. “When we got to Malaysia, we had no food, no clothes and no water. So we see what’s happening in the Philippines and feel like this was us and we have to do something for them.”

Last Sabbath Dave Weigley, president of the Columbia Union Conference, honored former United States congressman Rep. Roscoe Bartlett at Chesapeake Conference’s Frederick (Md.) church where Bartlett is a member. Bartlett, 86, represented Maryland’s Sixth District from 1993-2013.

Looking back, Josephine Benton, now 87, knows exactly where her desire to minister came from. Her father was a Seventh-day Adventist evangelist who frequently moved their family around the country. “I would sit and listen to my dad’s sermons, and I always knew that if I had been born a boy, I would have been a preacher,” she said. “But that path didn’t seem open to me.”

Following the Columbia Union Conference Special Constituency’s historic July 29 decision to ordain pastors without regard to gender, the union executive committee voted to approve the ordination of 16 women pastors. The women include Allegheny East Conference’s Rosa Taylor Banks, Brenda Billingy, Paula Olivier and Lisa Smith-Reid; Ohio Conference’s Linda Farley, Lori Farr, Sandra Pappenfus and Carmen Seibold; and Potomac’s Karen L. Cress, Sharon Cress, Jennifer Deans, Debbie Eisele, Cherilyn O’Ffill and Sonia Perez. The vote included emeritus credentials for Chesapeake Conference’s Charlotte McClure and Josephine Benton, the first female pastor presented for ordination in 1973.

Many churches in the Chesapeake Conference employed traditional and creative forms of evangelism recently to reach people in their communities.

Many churches in the Chesapeake Conference employed traditional and creative forms of evangelism recently to reach people in their communities.

Scissors snipped and sewing machines whirred as the senior class, grades 4-12, of the Home Sweet Home School Co-op, based at the Williamsport (Md.) church, created dresses this past spring to support a program called Little Dresses for Africa. 

Ophelia M. Barizo, chairperson of the Science department at Highland View Academy (HVA) in Hagerstown, Md., was recently named the high school level winner of the Making a Difference Award.

Sleeping bags were everywhere at Chesapeake Conference’s Pathfinder Winter Classoree held at Mount Aetna Camp and Retreat Center in Hagerstown, Md. There were 410 Pathfinders registered for the event—a record turnout that far exceeded the center’s lodging