Potomac Conference

For one special Sabbath, the doors of some 40 Seventh-day Adventist churches in the Northern Virginia area were closed. Their members instead  gathered at the Hylton Memorial Chapel for a joint worship service, fellowship, training and a free concert.

What happened when Sligo church turned its fellowship space into first-class vegetarian restaurant?

Story by Don W. McFarlane; Photos by Paolo Esposito

Story by Visitor Staff

“Era un panorama un poco raro.”

Historia por Taashi Rowe

After watching Rex Hugus, a quiet coworker read his Bible on lunch breaks, Larry Sutherland’s curiosity finally got the best of him. “I finally had to ask Rex some questions,” Sutherland said. “I was intrigued with his background and found his habits to be different from most [people] I worked with,” said Sutherland.

Last Sabbath hundreds of people gathered at Potomac Conference’s Sligo church in Takoma Park, Md., to celebrate the life of John Konrad, who since 1996 served as vice president and general manager of Washington, D.C.’s contemporary Christian music station, WGTS 91.9 FM. Konrad, 43, died at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, January 2, after a short illness.

It’s a Sabbath morning and the small chapel at 5203 Manchester Drive in Temple Hills, Md., is packed. This is the inaugural meeting of the Arise church, the first Hispanic American church in the Potomac Conference and people have come from Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., to see what it is all about.

During year end meetings last week, Columbia Union Conference Executive Committee members voted to give $40,000 to the Allegheny East and New Jersey conferences to aid them in their super storm Sandy relief efforts. The three union officers then prayed over José H. Cortés, New Jersey Conference president; and Henry J. Fordham, Allegheny East Conference president; as well as for the efforts of volunteers throughout New Jersey.

At the beginning of the year, Hispanic young people in the Potomac Conference received a CD chockfull of sermons, posters and other materials to help prepare them to become evangelists. Nine months later, those who accepted the challenge stood in front of friends and family preaching about Jesus during a recent youth evangelism week at their churches. Some 27 churches participated, including youth from the Bealton (Va.), Oxon Hill (Md.) and District of Columbia Spanish churches.

If you are ever in Baltimore on a Friday evening, you can find Yehuda Mordechai in the basement of an old Jewish synagogue. Allegheny East Conference’s Berea Temple now occupies the building, but its Jewish history holds special significance to Mordechai, who is working to build up the newly established Baltimore Hebrew Adventist congregation in an area with a large Jewish population. It is in this place that Mordechai leads a Friday night Shabbat service designed to reach Jews for Jesus.