We went to Amarillo Adventist Church last weekend to do their church service and have a seminar on Sabbath afternoon.

We didn’t leave until 3:30pm Friday, because one of the drivers had an afternoon class. There were 14 of us, seven guys and seven girls. We embarked on our journey and after a couple of hours, we made it to Amarillo.

It took a little while to find our hotel, because they gave us bad directions. We finally found it and headed to bed. Can you believe we fit everyone in two hotel rooms!?

We woke up early Sabbath morning and headed for the church. The church was only five minutes from our hotel.

Amarillo has an interesting church building. They just built it in 2003. The building doubles as a fellowship hall for potluck. It feels informal yet beautiful. I felt like I was walking into rich person’s living room.

The church members were friendly and accomodating. They found us a place to setup our booth. One of them even helped us put our brochures in the church bulletins.

For the church service, we had song service and then we gave the church a gift, a framed picture of Jesus. Uzzie told a children’s story about Ellen G. White and her horse. He even used slides on powerpoint to keep the kids attention. Mahalia sang special music. Lubasi preached a sermon on the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20.
After the church service, we had potluck. Amarillo does a good job with their potlucks. They have a lot of food, and they usually have it every Sabbath.

After potluck, we prepared for our seminar at 2pm. While I was preparing for my seminar on Adventist history, the church elder came to me and asked if we were having a seminar.

Oops. Slight misunderstanding. I don’t think the seminar was in the bulletin. Plus, in our announcements, we didn’t state the exact time of the seminar. Also, we planned to start at 2pm and end at 4pm, but the church had choir practice at 3pm.

Oh well, we grabbed the mic and made a quick announcement to those who stuck around after potluck. Less than 20 showed up, but all of us presenters spoke with passion. Edwin talked about prayer and devotional life. Alex spoke about reading the Bible. I talked about Adventist history. Juliana and Phoebe went over the Old Testament sanctuary.

We all had to cut our material because of the shorter time block, but somehow we managed to keep the seminar one hour long. I actually timed Juliana and Phoebe. Between the two of them, they only spoke for 13 minutes. Talk about quick overview of the sanctuary!

We gave away a couple of Ellen G. White books to people who answered questions about the sermon. And during the seminar, we had a children’s ministry in one of the Sabbath School rooms.

Of course, before we left we had to take some group pictures.

More pictures from the trip