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Story by Jenevieve Lettsome

Earlier this year, the Columbia Union’s Office of Strategic Communication and Public Relations partnered with AdventSource to publish the Communication Handbook with articles on copyright law, social media, media relations, video production, marketing, photography, branding, news writing, website design and more.

Project coordinator and editor, Celeste Ryan Blyden, vice president for Strategic Communication and Public Relations, notes, “Our goal was to provide tools and
ideas to facilitate and enhance efforts to tell our Church’s stories and share our message internally and externally.”

Story by Dupont Park Church Staff

Members of Allegheny East Conference’s Dupont Park church in Washington, D.C., were disappointed when they had to suspend their Community Baby Shower (CBS) and Back to School Giveaway, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several months into the community’s new normal of social distancing, and after much prayer and discussion over the church’s spiritual obligation to the community, church members started planning the event.

Dupont Park’s Inner-City Ministries leader, Lamont Bailey, says, “Our goal [was] simple: to eliminate the choice parents have to make—deciding between what’s best for their kids and best for their budget.” 

By WGTS Staff

Much like books can stretch our imagination and transport us to new and exciting places, the radio signal of WGTS 91.9 has the ability to reach beyond our area and bring people from throughout the world into our listening family.

Meet WGTS 91.9 listener Christian Sollberger, a pastor of a Mennonite church in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. He discovered the station when his daughter attended her Swiss friend’s wedding in Washington, D.C., and she started listening. “Since then, I tune into WGTS several times a week,” says Sollberger, “especially as I pray when I’m jogging or hiking.

“As soon as I turn it on, the ‘encouragement engine’ is started,” he says.

Story by Jacklyn Ruth

Recently, the STEM department at Highland View Academy (Hagerstown, Md.) received a grant totaling $9,992 from the Toshiba America Foundation (TAF). These funds will go to support the Astronomy for All Project, a new STEM elective course created by Kenji Nomura, computer science, math teacher and IT Manager at Highland View Academy. 

"When we went online during the spring semester, I started researching potential astronomy projects that we could conduct remotely with the students in our STEM program," says Nomura. "The class is taught partially as a lecture and partially as night observation sessions with the equipment we were able to obtain through the grant awarded by Toshiba. The class is designed to cover several cross-curricular topics surrounding astronomy."

Image by ilegalni from Pixabay

Editorial by Terry Forde

The New Testament account of how Jesus used a small boy’s lunch to miraculously feed a multitude of more than 5,000 is a remarkable story and one that speaks of God’s abundant care for every person, in even our mundane daily needs.

But look what happens next: “When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost’” (John 6:12, KJV). Having graciously provided for their hunger, Jesus now invites His followers and all of the crowd to be part of the next part of the story.

By Tamyra Horst

The Simple Way, a Pittsburgh house church network, is not your typical church. Instead of a building, members meet in homes. There are currently three church groups meeting in Carnegie, Carrick and Ingram. They work together to share the gospel with family and friends in their neighborhoods and at work. Members are intentional in praying and looking for opportunities to connect with and invite people to join them. These simple invitations to worship and study together are changing lives. Just ask Tom, Crystal, Randy, Rick and Karen,who were all recently baptized at The Simple Way. 

Story by Tamyra Horst
 
After a day on the water, Joshua Plohocky and Rich Winget realized they had lost track of time and soon needed to head downstream quickly to make it off the river before dark.
As they prepared to leave, Plohocky got out of his kayak to remove it from a shallow rocky area. After moving it to deeper water, he slipped while entering the kayak and a little water got into the boat, but quickly got back into the kayak and the two paddled down river.
 
Before long, Plohocky realized that it was getting increasingly difficult to keep up with Winget and his kayak was feeling very heavy. Winget looked back and noticed the rear of the kayak was sinking. The kayak’s drain hole was sucking in water. Plohocky was paddling with over 100 pounds of water in his boat!