News

Story by V. Michelle Bernard

At the Columbia Union Conference Constituency Meeting in May 2016, union leadership and conference presidents made a commitment to continue the strong focus on evangelism in the new quinquennium, starting with an initiative themed “Share the Light, Share the Hope.” Here are some highlights to date:

Story by Cristina Macena

Meadow View Junior Academy (MVJA) in Chesterfield recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Pastor Art Randall, former pastor of the Robbinsville church, one of the churches that supported MVJA through the years, delivered a powerful sermon to an audience of nearly 300 people.

Blog by Rob Vandeman

We love to read the Psalms and rightly so. While Psalms may be the most popular book of the Bible, the Psalms are often the most misunderstood and misinterpreted. Many of us choose a few favorites and ignore others that strike us as bizarre or even cruel. Yet all the psalms were written for our benefit. To understand and appreciate the whole collection, we need solid principles of interpretation that will guide us to a proper reading and application of this riveting part of God’s Word.

There are several principles that we should keep in mind as we read the psalms. Not only will they help us understand God’s message in the psalms, but the principles will also allow us to see them in all their richness. As we meditate on the psalms we think, feel, imagine and choose in increasingly godly ways.

In order to illustrate each of these principles, we will apply them to Psalm 131:

    A song for the ascent to Jerusalem    A psalm of David

    1. My heart is not proud, O Lord,
    my eyes are not haughty;
    I do not concern myself with great matters
    or things too wonderful for me.

    2. But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
    like a weaned child with its mother,
    like a weaned child is my soul within me.

Story by Heidi Whetmore

As Spencerville Adventist Academy (SAA) sophomore Autumn Uhrig watched a YouTube video one morning, something piqued her interest. Millions of people who can’t speak rely on text-to-speech devices to communicate. Most devices have the same vocal sound for all users, regardless of age or gender. Uhrig learned of VocaliD, which, according to their website, is “the human voicebank of the world.”

VocaliD records human voices, mixes them with sounds a non-speaking person can make and blends them to make a unique humanized voice in which the machine talks for them. Uhrig wanted to do her part in helping someone find their voice. She visited the website, recorded a couple of sentences and waited to see if there was anyone her age who needed assistance. Months later she received an email that a young girl, Tesa, was a good match for her voice. Uhrig now needed to record 3,488 sentences to get the job done.