Greetings Everyone:
I am very sorry to report to you that our brother Mr. Don Contardi died last evening. He fought a very hard fight against pancreatic cancer. We have lost a true friend and faithful servant of God. Mrs. Contardi (Carole) and the family have fought this battle with him. Though we will miss him very much in the Church and Ministry, he has won.
My wife and I will be in Toronto for this Sabbath and will be with the Contardi family in Iron River, Michigan for a graveside service Monday morning at 11:00. My understanding is that Mrs. Contardi, her son Dan and daughter Chris will drive over to Illinois from New York. They will meet Mr. and Mrs. Contardi's son Donnie and other family members in Illinois and then drive up to Iron River, Michigan. Please pray for a safe trip for the family, and for God's comfort to sustain them in this time of their loss.
Mr. Meredith had a very good trip to Vancouver, BC, Canada for Pentecost weekend. Mr. Ames also reported a good visit to Chicago and Milwaukee. My wife and I enjoyed visiting with Mr. and Mrs. Weston in Kansas City (we kept them up until 3:00 a.m. because of a flight delay of three hours) then visited until about 6:30 the next day. We had a nice Sabbath visiting with brethren in Springfield, Missouri. We spent Pentecost with brethren in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and returned home Monday morning—tired but happy.
Mr. Hernandez has returned from Guatemala and Mexico, but I have not yet received a report from him as he is suffering from a head cold and has not been in the office.
FESTIVAL ANNOUNCEMENT:
The San Diego Festival site is FULL!
The Festival Office has mailed confirmations to all those who have been accepted to the San Diego site and notification letters for those whom there is no room. No one else should apply at this time, as the site is full.
We are sorry to disappoint those who would like to be in San Diego this year. However, there is no available space for overflow and fire regulations limited us to 300 in the auditorium. For those who might have been planning to apply to San Diego, please take advantage of one of the many other fine sites in the U.S. and Canada.
The Pre-Registration Forms are coming in quite well. However, a number have forgotten to indicate which site they plan to attend. This is causing the office to have to contact the registrants by phone or e-mail to get this information. PLEASE fill in the site you plan to attend directly above the row of boxes for the PIN.
TRINIDAD/TOBAGO and BARBADOS:
My sincere apology for over-looking the Trinidad/Tobago site in the Festival information listed in the Living Church News. Information will be in the next issue of the Living Church News. In the meantime, if you wish general information you may contact Mr. Ramsumair Sookram via e-mail: [email protected] .
If you have Internet access, you may log on for information to:
Remember that in order to reach the member area of the Church Web site, you need to use the word "member" as your Username (NOT your own name!), and use as the password: galatians220 (with no capitals, no spaces and no punctuation).
If you do not have Internet availability, perhaps you have a friend who might download the information for you.
AUSTRALIA/SOUTHEAST ASIA:
I believe you will appreciate excerpts from Mr. Bruce Tyler's report from Sri Lanka.
Greetings to you all from Colombo, Sri Lanka:
Here in Colombo, just yesterday, the peace and happiness was shattered by another terrorist attack. I arrived in Sri Lanka on Tuesday evening after travelling from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and was warmly greeted by about twenty of the Colombo brethren at Jerome and Annette Pereira's home. We all dined together, eating Sri Lankan style, after which I was taken to an apartment which had been organized for me - in Mount Lavinia - a safe area. Thursday morning I spent counseling with some prospective members seeking baptism. Then early in the afternoon Mr. Rodney Van Heer and I were having a quiet lunch together when the explosion occurred.
The press reported twenty-three people were killed and over sixty taken to hospital. It is expected that the number of deaths will rise. It was just about 2 miles (3+ km) away from where I am staying. Rodney recognized the blast as a bomb explosion. One Sri Lankan government minister was assassinated as well as a number of other high profile dignitaries who were taking part in a special commemoration march for the War Heroes.
It reminded me of Revelation 6:3-4 "And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
Our region has seen several hot spots recently - Fiji, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and of course the Philippine problem. Sadly though, we know the situation will not improve, at least until Christ returns and God's Kingdom is ruling.
Baptisms—between now and Sunday I expect to have completed the counseling with those here in Sri Lanka who are seeking baptism. I anticipate we will have another nine souls added to God's growing family. Most of these people have been waiting patiently several years for a minister to visit. Previously, Mr. Jonathan McNair paid a brief visit here in 1994. I know the brethren pray that we can visit them a little more frequently in the future.
I must also mention here that I baptized four others in Australia just before Passover. They were Mrs. Sandra Inglis, Mr. John Jacobs and Mr. and Mrs. Karl Jung. Mrs. Inglis is from Brisbane while the others are from Adelaide. Mr. Michael Gill visited the Adelaide members last month and reported that he expects there will be more baptisms there in the near future.
Bible Study Course—also, another statistic you may be interested to know is that in Australia, 40% of our subscribers are now registered to study the new Bible Study Course. It is our hope that most of those doing the Course will continue after the fourth lesson. I do not have the figures for other countries in the region but perhaps I can include these later for you.
Tomorrow's World Program—I was just informed this morning that the response to last week's program, Is There a Real Devil?, exceeded 80 calls from the three stations. There will be some letter responses yet to arrive, so we could easily go over 90 responses. This makes it one of our highest response programs. I have not heard what the Auckland calls were like, as Mr. & Mrs. Penman are in Vanuatu this week visiting the brethren on various of the islands as well as keeping Pentecost with those members in Port Vila.
Feast of Tabernacles—some have asked what they should do about the Pre-Registration Form in the latest Living Church News. Those of you in the Australasian/Asian Region should return it either to your nearest local office or the Festival co-ordinator in your area.
For your general information, we will have organised Festival sites in:
* Australia (Ballina, NSW), (2) New Zealand, (3) Vanuatu, (4) Papua New Guinea, (5) Malaysia, (6) Thailand, (7/8) Myanmar-2 sites and (9) Sri Lanka.
Church Visits—I want to specially thank our brethren in Kuala Lumpur and Bahau, Malaysia for their wonderful hospitality. In this predominately Islamic country, it is most encouraging to see the zeal and dedication of our members in such "far-off" places. I kept the Sabbath in Bahau with, I think, 60 of our brethren.
As mentioned earlier, Mr. Penman is now in Vanuatu visiting our brethren there.
I think most of you realize just how important these trips are to our scattered people. I often think of the Apostle Paul's words to Barnabas in Acts 15:36 "Then after some days Paul said to Barnabas, "Let us now go back and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they are doing." (NKJV).
God's people are the same today. We all need encouragement from God's faithful shepherds from time to time. It is just sad that so many who were given that task and responsibility are no longer dedicated to their calling. Our prayer of course is that they will repent and turn to God.
Mr. Rajan Moses is hoping to visit Myanmar and Thailand in the near future. We will inform our brethren in those areas of his travel plans as soon as arrangements are made. Also, I know our members in PNG would like us to visit them again before the Feast but this is going to depend on time and money. Mr. and Mrs. Ken MacLeod are planning to keep the Feast in Wewak this year with all our PNG brethren and I know that will be a great encouragement for them.
Headquarters Visit—during the early part of May, we had a visit from Mr. Jerry Ruddlesden. He is an accountant working for Mr. Fred Dattalo in the church's accounting office in San Diego. Mr. Penman also traveled from New Zealand to be with us. The purpose of Mr. Ruddlesden's visit was to help us, in this region, to standard our bookkeeping with headquarters. Mr. Ruddlesden was very helpful and both Mr. Penman and I were pleased to have benefited from his guidance.
I will be leaving Sri Lanka early next Tuesday morning. We have to leave for the airport at 4:00 a.m. - definitely not my favorite time. I plan to stop off in Singapore on my way back to Brisbane to visit William Tan and some others who I understand have recently moved there from Malaysia.
That is the end of Mr. Tyler's report. I did a bit of editing for sake of space, but the substance is there.
Have a safe Sabbath.
Carl E. McNair