Pennsylvania Conference

This past weekend, delegates at the Pennsylvania Conference 2023 Constituency Session experienced a great morning of praising God for the incredible ways He has blessed them over the last five years.

Conference membership has grown to more than 13,680 members, as the conference welcome an average of 500 new believers--many from the 100 or more evangelistic events--each year.

Delegates to the session re-elected their officers, President Gary Gibbs, Executive Secretary Shawn Shives, and Treasurer Kevin Costello.

Story by Tamyra Horst

João Gabriel Ramos Marques’ mother prayed for her son. She knew his friends were a bad influence on him and saw the poor choices he was making. She believed that God would change her son and the direction of his life.

“My mother never gave up on me, despite my rebellious actions,” shares Marques. “She sent me to Faculdade Adventista da Amazonia, an Adventist school in Brazil, in hopes that I could find truth and Jesus.”

Story by Leona Bange

Today, students face many challenges, pressures and temptations. Seventh-day Adventist education, however, offers young people and their parents a foundation of Christian values and academic excellence.

Academic Achievement. Students in Adventist schools, on average, place half a grade higher nationally in all subjects than other students. More than 85 percent of graduates from an Adventist school go on to college. In Adventist schools, the goal of academic achievement is always paired with the aim of developing a relationship with the Creator—an unbeatable combination!

Story by V. Michelle Bernard

This summer, a team of volunteers from Pennsylvania Conference’s L.E.G.I.T. (Love, Encourage, Give, Inspire, Teach) Simple Home church in Easton, Pa., partnered with various churches to share the gospel at children’s camps in Shamokin and Warminster, Pa.

Story by Elizabeth Anderson

Scott Kabel, who currently resides in Hawaii, has ties to Pennsylvania Conference’s Blue Mountain Academy where he taught a class—and played tabletop games with his students—while doing dissertation work for his education doctorate.

These days, playing games with the community in Hawaii is his passion. Kabel owns a trove of tabletop games and started hosting a weekly game night at the Hawaii Conference office in August of 2022 “with mostly church friends,” Kabel says. “But then I started playing in more areas around town. Now maybe [only] a third of the group is Adventist. Sometimes fewer.”