ANN Bulletin
Adventist News Network
Seventh-day Adventist Church World Headquarters
November 27, 2007

In This Issue:
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* For Cambodian fishing families, an effort to hook a healthier future

* Romania: Adventist national ad campaign declares Bible reading a
must
* Adventists Around the World
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For Cambodian fishing families, an effort to hook a healthier future
Stockton, California, United States .... [Elizabeth Lechleitner/ANN]
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In Cambodia, small talk -- much like life in the monsoon-drenched
Southeast Asian country -- is mired in the rice fields. Locals are
likely to ask each other, "How's your crop this year?" Not so for the
nearly 20,000 Cambodian refugees resettled along the fish-rich
Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta. Here, "How're your kids doing in
school?" is conversation bait.

"Over the years, Cambodians have had more and more problems with their
kids. So many of these kids are not very successful in school -- they
are dropping out, joining gangs," says Sophat Sorn, himself a Cambodian
immigrant, community social worker and a Buddhist-turned Seventh-day
Adventist pastor in Stockton.

Sorn says health and environmental researchers in California, trawling
for an explanation beyond delinquency, discovered a link between
learning and memory problems and a mercury-contaminated diet. In 2004,
Sorn and a group of volunteers began distributing pamphlets throughout
the region, warning Cambodians of the delta's mercury-laden fish.

On the front of each blue pamphlet, bold yellow lettering reads
"Protect your health; Eat better fish." Inside, there's information on
the link between memory loss and contaminated fish, how many fish are
safe to eat, and a map of the delta indicating the tainted waterways.

The Port of Stockton, Sorn explains, is under a fishing advisory, but
most native Khmers -- many of whom are subsistence fishers -- grew up
reeling supper from the muddy Mekong to no ill effect and find it hard
to believe the deceptively clear port is teeming with pollutants. With
the pamphlets, printed in the Khmer language, Sorn hopes the Cambodians
will learn to catch cleaner fish and raise healthier families.

"It's very strange information to them, you know, and they kind of
resist the message at first. But we keep talking to them -- always very
friendly," Sorn says. "We explain to them that sometimes in Cambodia we
don't have any way to test the water, but here they do. Then they start
to really listen. They tell us, 'Wow, we had no idea these fish could
be bad for us.'"

Mercury, PCBs and pesticides leaking into the Port of Stockton, Sorn
says, have accumulated to toxic levels in the area fish, which are
ubiquitous in Cambodian cuisine.

"We had all these people eating fish two or three times a day, you
know, where officials were recommending only eating them one or two
times a month," Sorn remembers.

"When Cambodians see the sign that says, 'Don't eat the fish you catch
here,' they interpret this to mean that the fish a few feet away are
fine," says Sovanna Koeurt, director of Asian Pacific Self-development
and Residential Association and a member of the Stockton Adventist
Cambodian Group Sorn pastors.

"The water looks clean to them, so they don't believe the fish are
bad." They're especially wary of warnings from government officials,
Sorn says.

The suspicion, he adds, is understandable -- most Cambodian refugees
survived the barbaric Pol Pot regime, which was responsible for at
least 1.5 million deaths from execution, forced labor and starvation.
"If they don't know you and trust you, they won't listen," Sorn says.

Sorn, who grew up in a Buddhist subsistence farming family in Cambodia,
joined the Republican army fighting the Khmer Rouge in 1971 at age 18.
When the Republic fell to Pol Pot in 1975, Sorn landed in a forced
labor camp. Later, Sorn and his family fled to a Thai-Cambodian refugee
border camp to escape fate in Cambodia's Killing Fields."

Eight years later, Sorn and his family were accepted for refugee
relocation by the United States government and immigrated to California
in 1991. He enrolled in community college, and was soon tapped by the
local government to work with the Cambodian community in Stockton.

"I got to know a lot of people in the community, you know? I got to
earn their trust," Sorn says. He founded United Cambodian Families, a
local non-profit organization, in 2000, and has received recognition
for his community service from the Blue Cross of California, the U.S.
Congress and, this month, from the California Department of Public
Health and Environmental Health Investigation Branch.

Over the past three years, Sorn and local volunteers have distributed
the pamphlets to several thousand Cambodian refugees living in five
different communities in the Stockton region. "This year, I delegate,"
he says. As program producer for Adventist World Radio programming
broadcast from Guam, Sorn is busy translating news and information to
an estimated 15 million Cambodian listeners.

"We want everybody to know, not just about the mercury in the fish, but
also about Jesus," he says, adding that his motto, as a self-described
"shy guy" is, "Don't talk much -- do much."


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Romania: Adventist national ad campaign declares Bible reading a must
Bucharest, Romania .... [Rajmund Dabrowski/ANN]
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Beatrice Lospa never imagined a nationwide initiative to make reading
the Bible attractive and accessible to every Romanian would be so
popular.

A coordinator of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's Bible reading
clubs, Sola Scriptura (Latin for "Scripture only"), Lospa eagerly tells
how a national advertising campaign backed by an anonymous donation is
blending high-profile marketing with the church's basic mission
outreach. Now, hundreds are coming to Bible reading clubs across
Romania.

"We never thought we would find ourselves at this crossroads," Lospa
says while standing at a street intersection in the heart of Bucharest.
For her and her team the crossroads are literal.

"Look, our billboard will come up next," she says, beaming with
excitement at seeing the Sola Scriptura ad roll up on an electronic
billboard -- a picture of a thoughtful-looking man at the National
Library with the words, "Knowing how to read does you no good if you
have never read the Bible. solascriptura.ro. A program for reading the
Bible."

The slogan seemed a bit risky to some church members, Lospa says, but
with access to 148 billboards in Bucharest, Constanta, Timisoara,
Brasov and other cities around the country, church leaders decided to
be bold.

Romanians had little access to Bibles under communism's 50-year rule,
Lospa explains. "Today, everyone seems to be talking about religion,
but many people have little or no knowledge of the role the Holy
Scriptures play in Christianity."

"Romanians have a Christian Orthodox tradition where priests passed on
knowledge about Christianity, the Bible and its message, to the
people," Lospa says.

"Romanians have yet to read the Holy Scriptures by themselves."

In 2000, Adventist Church leaders tried to stir interest among
Romanians by inviting people to simply read the Bible. Sola Scriptura
reading clubs were given meeting space by the church's 20 nationwide
Christian bookstores, which share the same name.

But the clubs were sparsely attended and lacked financial backing for
promotion. That changed when a donation of 60,000 euros (about
US$88,000) arrived in the Sola Scriptura bank account.

"I cannot express in words the emotion, the joy and the intensity of
the feelings I had, because the money came in response to our prayers,"
Lospa says.

Then the anonymous donor set up a meeting with her. "I believe I can do
more," he said confidently while sitting across from her in her office,
she recalls.

"What can be more than 60,000 euros?" Lospa asked him.

He explained that as president of the largest billboard advertising
company in Romania, 60 percent of the country's outdoor ad business was
under his control.

Impressed, Lospa congratulated her guest. "Oh, I didn't tell you this
in order for you to congratulate me," he quipped, "but for you to think
of what you should write on the billboards I intend to place at main
road junctions and in the bus and tram stops."

Years earlier the donor attended the Sola Scriptura two-year Bible
course after a young man in Constanta offered him a flier. "I bought
books from the Sola Scriptura bookstore, I learned how to pray and I
applied everything I had learned to the business I run," he told Lospa.
"Things are different than before, and this is only because I began to
apply God's principles. I think it's high time I did something to thank
Him. It's nothing compared to what He has done for me."

After the messages were posted on billboards in July, Web traffic on
the Sola Scriptura site doubled to 5,383 visitors. Nearly 300
registered online to join a local club. Each meeting at various sites
draws about 30 to 50 attendees. Most sites host several meetings that
gather biweekly.

"This is a club, not a seminar," says Liviu Stanescu, a pastor in his
30s, who runs a local club in Bucharest.

Starting with the book of Genesis, the Bible reading clubs are designed
to encourage conversation. Participants are urged to ask questions
based on both the Bible and their experiences, Stanescu explains.

After a Bible reading class, many participants ask "Where do we go from
here?" Another course addresses prophecy because the first club reading
doesn't include prophetic books such as Isaiah, Daniel or Revelation.
Other course topics include improving health, family life and
discussions about the parables of Jesus.

Participants come from all walks of life. "We have ordinary people and
university professors, scientists and even one senator," Stanescu says.


"The Orthodox Church invites people to the church," he says, "but we
are inviting people to experience a personal relationship with God by
pointing them to the Bible. You can rejoice in God everyday, not only
on holy days, we say. People react to what they find in Sola Scriptura
as if this was something new to discover in their Christian life."

In August, Lospa and her team were in the middle of their four-month
long public billboard campaign. The Sola Scriptura team, busy with the
Internet, radio and television promotion, was reporting a doubling of
participation in Bible reading clubs despite the summer holidays.

"The Bible offers a challenge and an invitation that one's preparation
for life is not complete without being confronted with the message of
the Bible," Lospa says. "The Bible helps to overcome that void."


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Adventists Around the World
Silver Spring, Maryland, United States .... [Compiled by ANN Staff]
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Adventist Church pioneer to Albania dies ... Flora Sabatino-Lewis,
persecuted for sharing the Seventh-day Adventist message in 1940s
Communist Albania, died at age 93 on November 19 in Boston,
Massachusetts in the United States. Daniel Lewis had already pioneered
the Adventist message in Albania when, as a young bride, Sabatino-Lewis
went with her husband to his native Albania. Though they managed to
start a small congregation, the communist campaign against religion
landed the couple in prison in 1950. She was released after two days,
but her husband died in prison in 1953. Church leaders say the couple
planted the seed for church work that nurtured a growing Adventist
community under repression. Today nearly 300 Adventists worship in
three churches in Albania. Sabatino-Lewis' funeral was held on Friday,
November 23.

Church members affected by Papua New Guinea floods ... A Seventh-day
Adventist Church near the town of Popondetta has been washed away
following devastating floods in the Oro Province of Papua New Guinea,
church leaders in the South Pacific report. The Bangoho Adventist
Church, built three years ago, was destroyed together with more than 10
homes belonging to Seventh-day Adventists in the region north of Port
Moresby. Reports indicate seven consecutive days of rain from Cyclone
Guba have killed more than 70 people and left 55 missing.
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ANN Staff: Ray Dabrowski, director; Ansel Oliver, assistant director;
Taashi Rowe, editorial coordinator; Elizabeth Lechleitner, editorial
assistant.

Portuguese translation by Azenilto Brito, Spanish translation by Marcos
Paseggi, Italian translation by Vincenzo Annunziata and Lina Ferrara
and French translations by Stephanie Elofer.