Thousands of Seventh-day Adventist Christians from the Bahamas, Turks & Caicos Islands, the Cayman Islands and other parts of the West Indies met in Mandeville, Manchester, Jamaica on the weekend of November 10 to celebrate 100 years of the church in that area.

Beginning with a praise and thanksgiving vesper service on November 10 evening and culminating in an extensive recognition ceremony on November 11, the activities centered on othemes of thanksgiving to God, and building on the legacy left by pioneers by erecting spiritual monuments for future generations.

"Unless we have celebrations like this, we will have spiritual Alzheimer's disease," Pastor Matthew Bediako, secretary of the Adventist world church, cautioned during the midday worship on November 11 (Saturday). "That's why it's important for the church to celebrate 100 years. We need to remind [people] of the way the Lord has led us in this part of the vineyard," he said.

Throughout the major presentations of the weekend was the idea to focus not on self but, to give the praises to God instead.

The Recognition Ceremony was a major feature of the weekend and identified 160 leading Seventh-day Adventists who have served the Church "without expecting immediate rewards."

"Serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord," Pastor Israel Leito, president of the Adventist church in Inter-America, quoted from Ephesians 6 during his address.

Keynote speaker Pastor Noel Fraser, past president of the West Indies Union, said Jamaicans should obey the Ten Command-ments of God. He also urged church leaders to make sure that they too continue to keep the commandments and help Jamaica to be a better, peaceful, and Christ-like country.

Award categories included Youth & Education, Evangelism & Church Planting, Lay Leaders, Centenarians and past and current presidents of fields and administrators of institutions within the West Indies Union Conference.

There was also a colorful parade of the fields and institutions, a candle lighting ceremony representing the passing on of the legacy to the younger generation and a pictorial exhibition of the church's history.

Current president of the West Indies Union Conference, Pastor Patrick Allen, said of the celebration: "In these 24 hours of celebration ... we will take time to reflect, rejoice, recognize and recommit to the faith of Jesus Christ and then live and share this great Advent Message," he said.

In 1906 the West Indies union had 3,110 members in 72 congregations, with headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica. The region stretched from Venezuela and Colombia in the South through Central America to the entire Caribbean. The present West Indies Union Conference, a much smaller territory than in 1906, now consists of Jamaica, The Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos and the Cayman Islands with more than 243,000 collective members.