An evangelistic campaign with a community service component was held in Honiara, Solomon Islands, last month.
Led by Pastor Gary Webster, director of the Institute of Public Evangelism, the three-week campaign attracted around 7000 attendees during the week with numbers swelling to 10,000 on the weekends. A further 50,000 people attended the weekend services remotely through downlink sites. As a result of the campaign, at least 944 people were baptised with the final tally still being confirmed.
A field school was also conducted during the campaign, where approximately 60 pastors and evangelists received training. “Part of their work was to go visiting during the afternoon, classes in the mornings and in the evenings [attend] the campaign,” Pastor Webster said.
“This is the third field school they’ve had in the last year. All of them have yielded some really good results.”
For the final nine days of the campaign, church members from the Greater Sydney and North New South Wales conferences joined in a fly’n’build initiative and led Vocational Bible Studies (VBS) activities for the children.
The volunteers worked on two Betikama Adventist College staff houses where they re-clad the exterior walls, demolished two bathrooms, painted the entire exterior of the houses, installed four new doors, added mosquito screens to the windows and removed rotten framing.
The VBS program, which ran for five days, catered for 240 children and included training for local women to host and run similar programs in their churches. The volunteers also assisted in making more than 2400 children’s crafts and singing songs during the Sabbath afternoon program.
“The kids’ program was excellent because that was a training program, teaching the Solomon Islanders how to do VBS,” Pastor Webster explained.
“Lots of Solomon Islander ladies and some young people were involved in helping out, so they learned what to do.”
