Connecting Columbia Union Seventh-day Adventists

Potomac Conference

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.

t’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.

Last Friday Charlie “Doc” Shyab, a member of Potomac Conference’s Takoma Park (Md.) church, received the Bronze Star medal in a ceremony at Fort Meade in Maryland. Because of misplaced paperwork, the award was overdue by 44 years. It seemed only fitting that he would receive this recognition only a few days before the Veteran’s Day holiday.

The Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park, Md., has become the first hospital in Montgomery County to perform a da Vinci robotic single-site operation. This comes less than a year after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved single-site instruments for the da Vinci robotic surgical system last December.

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.

For many years, the building directly behind Potomac Conference’s Beltsville (Md.) church served as a parsonage. But on Tuesday, September 4, the building became a branch office of the Prince George’s County Department of Social Services. The office, located in the Adventist Community Services house at 4220 Ammendale Road, will offer emergency temporary cash assistance, food stamps and medical assistance.