In a country that had no Seventh-day Adventist Church members just 10 years ago, hundreds attended a series of evangelistic meetings in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on December 27. This is believed to be the largest Adventist outreach initiative ever held in the Southeast Asian country. It is also the largest Christian event to be held in the majority Buddhist country in almost ten years, said Garth Anthony, president of the Adventist church in Cambodia.

More than 100 buses transported Cambodians to the meetings each evening where, along with the spiritual emphasis, health experts also speak on a range of issues and conduct clinics in the community.

The meetings are the culmination of many months of community work and Bible studies by Global Mission pioneers and other local lay people. Speakers at the nightly meetings are a brother and sister team, Justin McNeilus, 20, and Christina McNeilus, 18, from North America.

Others involved in the project are Adventist Southeast Asia Projects, Gospel Outreach, Adventist Frontier Missions, Salt Ministries, and a team from the Collegedale Seventh-day Adventist Church, Tennessee, U.S.A.

"It is exciting to see supporting ministries, lay people, and the organized church work together," says Denzil McNeilus, supporter of the program. "The Lord never adds--He multiplies-- when we work together for Him."

Cambodia is still emerging from its brutal past under the Khmer Rouge regime, headed by Pol Pot, which oversaw the genocide of more than 2.4 million people throughout the country during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Adventist Church in Cambodia has grown from nothing in the early 1990s to a community of 4,600 members. In 2003, the church in the country's capital of Phnom Penh grew from 200 to more than 800 believers, after a series of meeting held by Pastor Jan Paulsen, president of the Adventist world church, and Mike Ryan, a vice president of the world church and director of Global Mission.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a mainstream Protestant church with more than 25 million weekly worshippers in 114,000 congregations in 203 countries and areas of the world. [Editor: Heidi Ryan and Christian B. Schaeffler for ANN/APD]