Mountain View Young Adults Get Acquainted With ‘The Man’

Story by Angelina Dickson

Geoff Starr (left), conference Youth Ministries, talks with attendees.

Approximately 30 young adults and youth from the Mountain View Conference recently discussed why prayer is such an important part of having a relationship with God. The discussion took place on the last weekend of the month during the conference’s third Annual Mountain View Young Adult Prayer Conference themed “He’s the Man,” held in Huttonsville, W.Va.

Joel “Joey” Nino, a 23-year-old theology major at Southern Adventist University (Tenn.), spoke to attendees during the general sessions about God and why He is ‘the Man.’ Through personal testimony and several stories from Scripture, Nino demonstrated how God is a God of love who reaches out to us and never leaves our side. Nino testified about how God took his life, once filled with violence, drugs, gangs and more, and made him a new creation.

He shared the story of the man with leprosy (Mark 1:40-42) who risked it all to reach out to Jesus to be healed not knowing for sure if He would be healed or rejected like he had so many times before. “He reached out in faith,” Nino said. “That is one reason why God is the Man because He reaches out to us in our affliction and heals us where we are."

Throughout the weekend, attendees were invited to write prayer requests on the prayer wall and participate in workshops discussing prayer and having expectancy and prayer in times of desperation and urgency.

“How many times do we pray to God and when He answers us, we don’t believe it?” asked Kathy Pepper, conference

Kathy Pepper leads group discussion.

prayer coordinator who led a group discussion on Acts 12, the story of Peter’s deliverance from jail.

“It is OK to wrestle with God in prayer,” she continued. “Sometimes, we need to draw a circle in the sand and tell God we are not moving until He blesses us and sometimes we need to be the answers to our own prayers.”