Hundreds of church members and regional supporters of Maranatha Volunteers International gathered at the Spring Meadows Seventh-day Adventist Church in Sanford, Florida, United States, for a regional mini-convention January 25, 2025.

The program shared testimonies and initiatives of the supporting ministry, which builds churches and schools and drills water wells around the world. The event also challenged and invited more members and supporters to get involved in “God’s Great Commission.”

“Today we are going to talk how God is growing His work around the world,” said associate pastor Shane Davis as he welcomed the congregation. The Spring Meadows church is known for having a strong emphasis on mission service around the world. Former and current members have served or are serving in dozens of countries in several continents.

Outstanding Experience in Mission Service

Besides long-term deployments, members have participated in short student mission medical mission trips in nine African countries and nine nations of the Pacific Rim and Southern Asia. The congregation has also sponsored 25 churches in India as part of mission projects in four countries in the region. Currently Eric and Carly Tirado, former members from Spring Meadows, are serving in Cambodia.

In Central America and the Caribbean, members have served in The Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, and 11 other nations, as well as in several South American countries. In the summer of 2024 a team from Spring Meadows served building a church and leading a Vacation Bible School program in Cusco, Peru. Members have also participated in mission initiatives in some European countries and several U.S. states.

“It’s great being shoulder to shoulder with such a mission-driven church,” Laura Noble, in charge of donor relations for Maranatha, said. Noble was the guest speaker of the morning worship service on January 25.

Church members and visitors to the Spring Meadows Adventist Church listen to the morning worship organized by Maranatha Volunteers International on January 25.

Photo: Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review

The grounds of Kajiado Adventist School and Rescue Center in Kajiado, Kenya, on its inauguration day in July 2024.

Photo: Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review

One of the multiple classrooms that Maranatha Volunteers International built at the Kajiado Adventist School and Rescue Center in Kajiado, Kenya.

Photo: Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review

Some of the students of the Kajiado Adventist School and Rescue Center in Kajiado, Kenya. Most of them have been saved from an early marriage and protected from female genital mutilation.

Photo: Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review

From a Trickle to a River

“It’s January,” Noble said at the opening of her message. “What are we going to do this year that’s going to make a difference 10 years from now? What are we going to do this year that’s going to make a difference 10,000 years from now?”

She retold the story, based on Ezekiel 47, of a mighty source of water that “starts with just a trickle and ends up as a gushy river of life.” “I find it fascinating,” Noble said, “because this is the story of mission.”

In Ezekiel he prophet, led by an angel, sees a trickle of water coming out under the door of the temple. But as he walks farther and farther, the water becomes deeper and deeper, until it reaches and revives the Dead Sea. Noble then applied that experience of Ezekiel to some of Maranatha’s initiatives around the world. She shared how some of Maranatha’s most encompassing or meaningful projects in the past decades started with a single act, a single conversation, a single idea.

Southeast Dominican Conference president Gabriel Paulino (right) shares the impact of Maranatha Volunteers International as the ministry executive vice president Kenneth Weiss translates, in Sanford, Florida, United States, January 25.

Photo: Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review

Maranatha Volunteers International staff and the local community celebrate the gushing of water in Kenya in 2022. Maranatha has drilled thousands of water wells in a dozen countries.

Photo: Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review

A group of ministry leaders and donors visit one of the hundred church buildings Maranatha Volunteers International built in the Dominican Republic.

Photo: Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review

Gabriel Paulino, president of the Southeast Dominican Conference, shows in a map the place of every single church building Maranatha Volunteers International has built in the country during the past three decades.

Photo: Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review

The Power of a Question or Idea

Noble mentioned Kajiado Adventist School and Rescue Center in Kenya. The institution, which helps protect young girls from early marriages and female genital mutilation, began when an Adventist woman took one of these at-risk girls in.

“There are more than 300 girls and boys there today, and it is part of ‘the river,’ ” she said.

She also referenced the experience of Maranatha in Mozambique, when the government told the ministry they may not finish the school unless they found a dedicated source of clean water for the hundreds of expected students.

“Then someone asked a question, ‘how hard would it be to drill a water well?’” Noble recalled. “Out of that question… [Maranatha] ended up drilling about 700 wells in Mozambique.” And then it kept drilling thousands of wells all around the world, often in hard-to-reach places, she shared.

“It is a literal river,” Noble said. “You are pulling people into the kingdom of God through a felt need; it’s so tangible!”

Noble also discussed Maranatha’s turning point when, in 1992, church leaders asked them to build 25 church buildings in the Dominican Republic (until then, Maranatha would build one or two churches here and there). After a visit from Maranatha’s president Don Noble and a board member, the latter asked him, “What are you going to do?” With more questions than answers, the ministry decided to move forward in faith. And that decision changed the church in the Dominican Republic and also changed Maranatha, Noble emphasized. “Do you know that we’ve had some years where Maranatha has built 1,600 churches?” she asked. “So let’s get in the river! The river goes to the Dead Sea, and in that sea everything will live!”

Maranatha Volunteers International is a nonprofit supporting ministry and is not operated by the corporate Seventh-day Adventist Church. The original article was published on the Adventist Review website.