2,000 Adventist Couples Renew Wedding Vows Jamaican couples get a crash course on how to improve their marriages.

 

 Northern Caribbean University president Trevor Gardner preparing to kiss his wife, Patricia, at a marriage conference on Feb. 7, 2015. Photo: Nigel Coke

A record 2,000 Seventh-day Adventist couples from across Jamaica renewed their marital vows at a gathering where they learned that the keys to a successful marriage are humility and the full surrender of self to God.

Willie and Elaine Oliver, directors the Family Ministries department of the Adventist world church, speaking at the “Journey Toward Intimacy” conference. Photo: Nigel Coke

The couples, young and old, waited in long lines at Northern Caribbean University in Mandeville, Jamaica, to gain free entrance to the couples’ conference, which is held once every five years and was organized by the Jamaica Union Conference.


“What was accomplished here today, where nearly 2,000 couples participated in this convention, is a statement to our nation that this church still believes that marriage is to be between a man and a woman as God intended it to be,” union treasurer Bancroft Barwise told the crowd as the Feb. 7 event wrapped up.

 
Fewer couples are tying the knot every year in Jamaica even as the divorce rate has grown from 11 percent in 2010 to 13 percent in 2013, according to the latest figures available from the Statistical Institute of Jamaica.

The most important path to an improved marriage is for the couple to be kind and loving, humble and forgiving, said the presenters, Willie and Elaine Oliver, who have been married for more than 30 years.

“The most critical ingredient is surrender: surrender to God and self,” said Elaine Oliver, who with her husband co-directs the Family Ministries department of the Adventist world church.
“Marriage is hard,” she said. “It’s hard work, and if I can focus on the other person more than I focus on myself — which is totally counter-cultural because we live in an individualistic world — then we can have a happy marriage.”

Willie Oliver underscored the necessity of humility.
“When we are humble, we will recognize that we have made a mistake and it’s OK to ask for forgiveness and apologize,” he said. “But persons might be just too proud to say, ‘I am sorry,’ and as the wise man Solomon said, ‘Pride goes before a fall.’ So if we want to stay strong in marriage, we have to be humble.”

Each couple received a 21-page workbook, “Journey Toward Intimacy,” written by the Olivers and packed with practical marital information from the Bible and the writings of Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White.

Among the questions is ”What did Jesus say about commitment in marriage?” The answer offered in the workbook is drawn from Matt. 19:3-6: “The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?’And He answered and said to them, ‘Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning “made them male and female,”and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.’”

In a section on committing to intimacy, the workbook quotes Ellen White’s Happiness Homemade, p. 24: “Determine to be all that is possible to be to each other. Continue the early attentions. In every way encourage each other in fighting the battles of life. … Let there be mutual love, mutual forbearance. Then marriage, instead of being the end of love, will be as it were the very beginning of love.”

The couples were given five- to 10-minute breaks during the conference to discuss their marriages and then list ways to enhance their relationships.
Five couples, one from each of the five Adventist conferences in Jamaica, were randomly selected and given a prize of a weekend for two at a resort.

Attendees Errol and Valerie Vaz, who have been married for 35 years, said they had filled in the workbook and looked forward to putting their new ideas into practice.
“There some areas that were discussed today that we need to brush up on, and we have made our list as to how we are going to address them,” Errol Vaz said.

Some 2,000 couples packing the gymnasium at Northern Caribbean University in Mandeville, Jamaica, for the conference. Photo: Nigel Coke

Adventist University Goes Hi-Tech, Winning Praise From Rwanda’s Premier

The Adventist University of Central Africa opens a state-of-the-art facility where smartboards replace chalkboards.

Rwanda’s prime minister cut the ribbon at the grand opening of a state-of-the-art facility that is expected to turn the Adventist University of Central Africa into a leading provider of IT and communication specialists for the region.

The inauguration of the Science and Technology Center, one of two major Adventist-owned buildings that were opened in Rwanda this week, marks the transformation of the university from a run-down place where students were ashamed to be seen into a top-flight school.


Prime Minister Anastase Murekesi, who toured the campus with a delegation that included Adventist Church leader Ted N.C. Wilson, thanked Wilson on Wednesday for making good on a promise in 2012 to support health and education in Rwanda.


Wilson in turn thanked Murekesi for fulfilling a government pledge to construct a 1 mile (2-kilometer) paved road to the campus’ entrance.
“Three years ago when breaking the ground for the building of this center, Pastor Ted Wilson left me with a promise of a church vision to support health and education in Rwanda,” Murekesi said. “On our part as the Rwandan government, we pledged to build a road. … Both promises have been kept. This is therefore an excellent partnership, and I look forward to many more years of fruitful collaboration.”

The university, formerly located in Mudende in western Rwanda, was destroyed by the 1994 genocide. It reopened in Gishushu, along the main road between the country’s main airport and the capital, Kigali, but offered sparse classroom space in old buildings until construction work started in earnest in 2012.

“It was like a slum,” university rector Abel Ngabo Sebahahashya said at the ceremony Wednesday.
He said students used to sneak on and off the campus with “a sense of humiliation and frustration,” hoping that no one saw them.

The campus is no longer “a kindergarten project but a world-class project,” said university chancellor Blasious Ruguri, who also serves as president of the Adventist Church’s East-Central Africa Division.

The Science and Technology Center has 24 classrooms that seat 40 to 60 students each. Photo: Claude Richli

24 Classrooms With Smartboards

The new building contains 24 classrooms that can accommodate 40 to 60 students. Each classroom boasts a smartboard, replacing chalk or a felt tip pen with a fully networked, digitally responsive whiteboard that facilitates presentations and the instant archiving of lecture notes. The center’s computer labs are equipped with state-of-the-art networked technology that allows students to study with teachers onsite or remotely.

The university, which has about 4,000 students, is working to make all of its teaching materials available digitally. Even the library will be fully digitized, with e-books to students’ computers.
The university also broke ground on Wednesday on a new guesthouse and dormitories. The rector said a school of medicine would open in 2016, the first in Rwanda and Central Africa.


The university’s expansion comes at a key time for the Rwandan government, which has vowed “to transform itself from a low-income agriculture-based economy to a knowledge-based, service-oriented economy with a middle-income country status by 2020,” according to a country report by the World Bank.


Before the prime minister left the campus, Wilson prayed for him and his family, Rwanda’s president, and the government. Wilson claimed a Bible promise regarding wisdom for the prime minister: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you” (James 1:5).

Prime Minister Anastase Murekesi, center, touring a computer lab in the new facility. University chancellor Blasious Ruguri is standing in the foreground to the left. Photo: Claude Richli

Mission Headquarters Opened

In a separate ceremony Tuesday, Wilson oversaw the opening of an eight-story headquarters for the Rwanda Union Mission. The mission had been operating in a modest building since its establishment in 1984, but the local church is quickly growing and Kigali has rapidly transformed into a regional center.


Rwanda is one of the Adventist Church’s fastest growing regions, with an average growth rate of 7 percent a year, and it has nearly 700,000 members.
The new headquarters offers spacious suites for church offices and for rent, and a stunning view of Kigali from its terrace at the top.


The headquarters and the new university center cost a combined 5 billion Rwandan francs ($7.2 million), church leaders said.


Wilson said in a speech that the new buildings were magnificent, but Adventists should not be blinded to the fact that they are tools to exercise a strong spiritual influence throughout the country and to help prepare Rwandans for the coming of Jesus.


In an acknowledgement of the humble beginnings of the work in Rwanda, Wilson and Hesron Byilingiro, president of the church in Rwanda, unveiled a plaque in front of the building to commemorate the legacy of Henri Monnier, the Swiss missionary who brought the Adventist message to Rwanda in 1923 and was the first to translate the Bible into the local Kinyarwanda language.