From Typhoid to Preaching

The Goldendale (Wash.) Church was privileged to have Stephanie Roberts, 15, give a slide presentation about her first evangelistic series in West Papua. Stephanie has lived there with her family since she was a baby.

Last year, a member of Global Evangelism (now known as Share Him) was visiting the mission where the family lives and encouraged her to give an evangelistic series. Roberts lives near an academy where 63 percent of the 300 students are non-Adventists. After praying about it, she decided to conduct the first series of meetings at the academy just across the road where she lived. About the same time she came down with typhoid. Each day of the series, she felt well in the morning, but by the evening she could hardly stand up. Her series consisted of 19 sermons. She had to have an interpreter, so she chose a member of her father’s staff. She presented the love of Jesus. She stressed that we have to be ready to help others at all times and to tell their neighbors and friends about Jesus. She told how everybody can do something for God and that we should prepare for His soon coming. At the end of this series, 34 people were baptized, including Stephanie, herself.

After three months, she, her parents and the interpreter, decided to go to an island with an Adventist village on it that had had problems. This village had followed a person who claimed to be Jesus. The Roberts went there to encourage the villagers to return to Jesus, led a series and six more people were baptized.

Featured in: August 2006

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