Cambodia: ADRA Intensifies Fight Against HIV/AIDS

The Cambodian office of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) has been awarded a grant of $125,000 from Community REACH (Rapid and Effective Action Combating HIV/AIDS) to reduce the stigma and discrimination of people living with HIV/AIDS in the Sampoy Meas District of Cambodia. During the two-year project, ADRA and its local partners will train Buddhist leaders, local authorities and people living with HIV/AIDS to help reduce internal and external discrimination and facilitate widespread and enduring changes in social attitudes.

British Adventists Support Traditional Marriage

The British government recently outlined plans to award same-sex couples the same legal rights as married couples. In a statement, Pastor Cecil Perry, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the United Kingdom and Ireland, reaffirmed the biblical view of the heterosexual model for the family. “We appreciate the government’s attempts to achieve fairness and equality in the treatment of couples and its desire to protect minority groups against discrimination. However, as Christians who accept the Bible as the inspired word of God, we cannot ignore the biblical mandate. The male-female family model given in scripture was initiated at creation and reaffirmed by Jesus Christ. We abandon it at our peril.”

Serbia: Math Exam Offered on Monday to Aid Sabbath Keepers

The Minister of Education in the Republic of Serbia organized a math exam on Monday, June 16, especially for Adventist children. The test provided an alternative to the Saturday, June 14 exam, which Adventists, who observe the Bible Sabbath, could not attend. In order to be able to enroll into secondary school, all children in Serbia are required to take several exams.

Tahiti: Pathfinders, Miss Tahiti, Lead Parade

More than 500 Seventh-day Adventist youth marched in Tahiti’s French Polynesia’s Autonomy Day parade on Sunday, June 29. The “Pathfinders”—an Adventist youth organization—were able to march again this year after several years of the parade taking place on Saturday, the Bible Sabbath. “This kind of event allows us to open up to the world and it is a way of witnessing,” says Georges Develay of LVDL Radio, an Adventist station in Tahiti. The march was opened by “Miss Tahiti 2003,” Heitiare Tribondeau, an Adventist from Moorea, an island Northwest of Tahiti. This week more than 400 Pathfinders are attending a camporee in Tatira, the eastern part of the island. [Cécile M. Trief contributed to this report]