Allegheny East Conference

Story by Michele Joseph/ Photos by Norman Mitchell

Saundra Austin’s prayer life changed the day she got baptized in the late 1970s. On that day, she felt too sick to leave home. “I called my Bible worker,” says Austin, now prayer coordinator for the Allegheny East Conference (AEC). “She said to just go back and lay down, and we’ll pray for you.”

Hours passed, and each time a pastor or prayer warrior called, she still felt sick. However, no one gave up praying. By the time the baptism began later that day at AEC’s Dupont Park church in Washington, D.C., she was the first one in line to enter the pool.

Roland Hill’s wife, Susie, was tired of hearing Hill complaining that there wasn’t a deep Christian book about success, so she encouraged the stewardship guru to write his own book.

Six months later, Hill, a pastor at Allegheny East Conference’s Maranatha church in Fredericksburg, Va., and Penuel church in Brandy Station, Va., noticed the prayer of Eliezer in Genesis 24:12—a prayer for success. His latest book, Success is Bigger Than Me, delves into all areas of success in Christian living.

The book includes an 8-week study guide designed to help readers ignite their lives and change their world, says Hill.

Story by Tamaria L. Kulemeka

“[The church] is supposed to be a hospital, but we’re not all ready to address the sick,” says James Jackson, AEC’s coordinator for Adventist Recovery Ministry (ARMin), and a member of the Mount Olivet church in Camden, N.J., who spent 20 years under the influence of alcohol and other drugs. After being “restored to sanity” and getting clean, he worked as a counselor and retired as a clinical supervisor for an agency that provided mental health and substance abuse services in the city. 

Story by Tamaria L. Kulemeka

The opioid and heroin epidemic is crippling communities across the nation, leaving health officials and providers, coroners, law enforcement and churches scrambling to respond to and combat this widespread crisis.

Bonnie Franckowiak, professor and coordinator of the Master of Science Nursing Program at Washington Adventist University in Takoma Park, Md., says, “The use of opioids in this country is staggering. It’s huge, and it’s growing all the time; we don’t seem to have a handle on it at all,” she says. “In 2012, 259 million prescriptions were written for opioids, which is enough to give every American adult their own pill box.”

Story by V. Michelle Bernard

Minnie McNeil, longtime Allegheny East Conference (AEC) and Columbia Union Conference Adventist Community Services (ACS)/Disaster Response director, recently retired.