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AdventHealth – Denver, Colorado … Global Health Initiatives (GHI), the Rocky Mountain Region branch of AdventHealth Global Missions, recently launched a new partnership with Maluti Adventist Hospital in Lesotho, a small mountainous country in southern Africa. This past March, the GHI team led its first clinical mission trip to Lesotho, focusing on collaborative projects with the hospital and outreach efforts in the surrounding communities.

“The first AdventHealth Rocky Mountain Region team to serve at Maluti Adventist Hospital in Lesotho was very successful,” shared Greg Hodgson, director of GHI. “The partnership with the hospital was outstanding with full support of Maluti staff and logistics.”

The team from AdventHealth was made up of several specialized groups, including community health, Helping Mothers and Babies Survive (HMBS), a hospital-based team, and a clean water team. During the mission week, the community health team served 1,164 patients, providing screenings for HIV, tuberculosis, and cervical cancer. They also offered well-being consultations to support overall patient health.

The HMBS team led a weeklong master class for nursing leaders from Maluti Adventist Hospital and the affiliated College of Nursing at Maluti Adventist College. During the training, AdventHealth’s team identified local champions from both the hospital and nursing school to help lead future training for local nurses and midwives across the region.

The hospital-based team collaborated closely with local medical staff to address a variety of needs. Their work ranged from assisting in two surgeries to leading suturing workshops for hospital and nursing school personnel. The team focused on meeting the Maluti Adventist Hospital team where they are while also encouraging a shared vision for advancing the quality of care moving forward.

The clean water team, led by GHI partner Rob Miller with Global Access 2030—a Colorado-based nonprofit organization and longtime partner of GHI— distributed nearly 400 clean water filtration systems across four villages. To help ensure the long-term sustainability and effective use of the filters, a representative from Maluti Adventist Hospital was designated to provide ongoing support and follow-up within the communities, mirroring the sustainability model used in the HMBS program.

These initial steps mark the beginning of a meaningful and lasting journey with our new partners at Maluti Adventist Hospital.

“As in any first project, some areas for improvement were acknowledged, yet everyone was impressed with the overall success of the partnership,” expressed Hodgson. “As we prepare for the next visit in October, we will continue to build on the foundation laid during this important visit.”

To learn more about this and other AdventHealth Rocky Mountain Region Global Mission sites, please reach out to Courtney Haas, a development officer at AdventHealth Rocky Mountain Region, at [email protected]

—AdventHealth. Republished with permission from the OUTLOOK magazine News website, June 9, 2025, article. Photo supplied.

By Godfrey Miranda

My aim is to know Him, to experience the power of His resurrection …
– Philippians 3:10, NET

Do you know the power of Jesus’ resurrection?

Just a couple weeks ago, I had a chance to study with a group of young people about the hope of Jesus’ second coming and the power of the resurrection. As I looked across the circle at one of the participants, I saw tears welling up in her eyes, tears of humble gratitude over what Jesus offers to us.

A little more recently, I was able to enjoy some time with a more “seasoned” friend who has been coming to grips with his increasing age. As he reflected on this awareness, his voice trailed off for a bit, and after a long pause he shared with a twinkle in his eye that the hope of the resurrection has been taking on new significance for him.

Do you know the power of Jesus’ resurrection? Like my friends, we can view the fact that Jesus rose from the dead as our guarantee that those who sleep in Jesus will someday soon be raised from the dead (1 Thessalonians 4:14) and that death itself will be swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54) when Jesus returns. What a blessed hope we have to look forward to! But is it possible that we can “experience the power of His resurrection” (Philippians 3:10) not only someday in the future but also in the present?

A New Life Today

Absolutely. Listen to the apostle Paul describing what Jesus’ resurrection means today for the believer who has been baptized into Christ:

We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (Romans 6:4, NIV).

When we say YES to Jesus and identify our story with His, two miracles happen: 1) our old self is put to death just like Jesus was put to death, and 2) we can now live a new life just as Jesus was raised to new life! That’s not only a future hope; that’s a present reality! Experiencing Jesus’ resurrection today means living a transformed life today—one that is no longer enslaved to sin (v. 6) but instead has been freed from sin (v. 7).

Friends, this is good news, and, maybe for some, it’s familiar news. But as we’ve been thinking on Paul’s message in Philippians through our recent sermon series, I’m discovering something new about this new life.

A New Look at Our New Life

In Philippians 3, Paul shares a bit of his personal testimony. He describes his former life of placing confidence in the flesh (vv. 4-6) in stark contrast to the things he now values (vv. 7-11) and the one thing he prioritizes above all:

… But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I PRESS ON toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14, NIV).

Interestingly, the term translated here as “press on” (also in v. 12) is actually the very same Greek word Paul uses to describe his former life of “persecuting the church” (v. 6). The verbal idea is that of chasing, hunting, pursuing with great fervor. Apparently, the old Paul was fixated on the feverish pursuit of Christ-followers, but the Paul who has experienced the power of Jesus’ resurrection feverishly pursues something else … or rather Someone else. Instead of chasing down all that’s wrong in others, his eye is single toward chasing relationship with the Righteous One and being found in Him.

And here’s the beauty of this testimony: God transforms our old self not just by replacing it, but by redeeming it.

I tend to think of walking in newness of life (Romans 6:4, NKJV) as a miracle that can only be accomplished when the old life has been removed entirely out of the way, but Paul’s experience seems to indicate that our old identity isn’t something God obliterates but instead resuscitates.

Consider this: When we read about Jesus appearing to His disciples after His resurrection, it’s evident that He was recognized by His friends, whether through physical features or customary habits that were familiar (cf. John 21:7; Luke 24:35). All this indicates that our hope of physical, bodily resurrection in the future still allows for some recognition of our former selves in our glorified state.

Paul’s testimony in Philippians points to the reality that the same can be true when we experience spiritual resurrection in the present.

Even in the new life we live, there may be some familiar vibes that hark back to our old selves—unique qualities and traits from our former lives that have been sanctified and even restored into the image of God.

Just ask the former fishermen on the Sea of Galilee whom Jesus turned into fishers of men. Just track the transformation of the sons of thunder (James and John) whose former strength of personality and even violent defense of Jesus were converted into a martyr’s loyalty and model of agape love. Or even follow the story of John Mark, whose penchant to abandon ministry and return to the comforts of home (Acts 13:13) was eventually transformed into a useful availability that Paul could lean on when others had forsaken him (2 Timothy 4:9-11). All this underscores a beautiful truth about God: He loves us for who we uniquely are and does all in His power to recreate us into who He has uniquely called us to be.

Again, do you know the power of Jesus’ resurrection? As you take time to reflect on your own story of grace, let God show you traits of your former life that He has transformed (and still is transforming!) in your new life. Let God bring awareness to former pursuits that He wants to convert with new and holy focus. Be real with those former weaknesses—and even boast in them (2 Corinthians 12:9)—so that God can reclaim them and make His strength perfect through them.

—Godfrey Miranda is lead pastor at the Littleton Seventh-day Adventist Church. Republished with permission from Littleton Adventist Church Pastor’s Blog. Photo by Aziz Acharki from Unsplash.

The Colorado Springs Central Seventh-day Adventist Church was built to serve the community.

Sabrina Riley – Colorado Springs, Colorado … Drive past the Colorado Springs Central Seventh-day Adventist Church at 1305 North Union Boulevard in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on any day of the week, and all you see is an aging mid-century modern house of worship, not all that different from thousands of others of a similar vintage across the nation. However, hidden in the basement of the Colorado Springs Central Church is a largely forgotten history shaped by world events.

The first Seventh-day Adventist congregation in Colorado Springs was admitted to the Colorado Conference in 1890. It was a group of about twenty people organized into a church by Elder Smith Sharp (1847-1931), a Seventh-day Adventist minister who worked in Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado before spending his later years in Tennessee.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the Colorado Springs Church relocated frequently, moving ever eastward from downtown. By 1963 the congregation had grown to 277 members, and they were no longer all able to fit in the building on North Wahsatch Avenue at the same time. This property was sold, the congregation started meeting in a rented Baptist church, and plans were begun for the construction of a new church on North Union Boulevard. The congregation broke ground for the new church in 1965.

World at Risk

As the design of the new church building took shape, it became more than just a place for the local congregation to worship. On October 20, 1963, the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists voted to contribute $7,500 to the new church building Colorado Springs. (The Central Union Reaper later reported that the General Conference contributed $6,000. The discrepancy between the magazine report and the General Conference meeting minutes has yet to be resolved.) Local churches are the property of the local conference—the Colorado Conference at that point—so this unusual grant indicated that something different was happening in Colorado Springs.

Since the United States had ended World War II by dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the world had come to feel increasingly unsafe. Americans lived, if not in fear, at least in anxiety that the Soviet Union might attack with nuclear weapons. In the 1950s, civil defense (what we now call emergency management and homeland security) focused on evacuation and mass casualty plans. In September 1961, President John F. Kennedy’s administration began a campaign to designate fallout shelters in which people could safely live for a period of weeks until radioactivity following a nuclear blast decayed to safer levels.

Throughout the 1950’s, Seventh-day Adventists worked with civil defense in their communities in a number of ways. Dorcas societies (now Adventist Community Services) collaborated with local authorities and the Red Cross in disaster response. Both Union College (Lincoln, Nebraska) and Walla Walla College (College Place, Washington) hosted civil defense drills in which Medical Cadet Corps, nursing, and home economics departments demonstrated how to manage mass casualties and feed crowds of displaced people.

In 1961, Adventists began designating buildings as fallout shelters as part of a national campaign for building such facilities under President John F. Kennedy’s administration. A community fallout shelter, capable of 460 people for two weeks, became part of the plan for the new church in Colorado Springs. This space (now the Adventist Community Services room) was not all that big. Church member Ron Baptist was about twelve years old when the room was completed. He remembers how crowded it was during a test run of the shelter. It was the first church building in Colorado Springs to qualify as a public fallout shelter. However, this was not the reason the General Conference used its own funds to support the project.

World at War

In April 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson increased American troop strength in Vietnam to over 60,000. While most Adventist soldiers in the 1960s trained as medics at the Medical Replacement Training Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, once trained they could be sent anywhere, including one of Colorado Springs’ several military installations.

These installations encompassed both Army and Air Force. Camp Carson was constructed in 1942 as an Army training site for World War II. In 1954, it became Fort Carson. While Camp Carson was under construction, Colorado Spring’s municipal airport was converted to an army airfield, named Peterson Field in 1942 (the airport moved to adjacent land on the south side of the army airfield).

Although Peterson Field was deactivated for several years after World War II, when Ent Airforce Base (AFB) was opened in 1951 at the corner of East Boulder Street and North Union Boulevard, Peterson Field became an ancillary installation to Ent AFB (two years after the Army closed Ent AFB, it became the United States Olympic Training Center). In 1961 construction began on the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, which was completed in 1965, and over the next several years its capabilities were expanded. Meanwhile, the Air Force acquired land in northern Colorado Springs on which to establish a service academy. Classes moved from their temporary location in Denver to Colorado Springs in 1958.

While the academy’s mission was officer education, the Air Force installations focused on national defense through early warning detection systems for incoming missiles. Fort Carson was processing and mobilizing soldiers for deployment to Southeast Asia. Because Adventist men were encouraged to wait for draft selection rather than volunteer and due to an informal understanding between the Seventh-day Adventist National Service Organization and the United States Army in which Adventist were assigned to the Army Medical Corps, it is probable that most, if not all, Adventist servicemen coming through Colorado Springs were soldiers at Fort Carson.

Between 1965 and 1967, just when the Central Church was under construction, 29,000 soldiers were mobilized through Fort Carson for service in Southeast Asia. In October 1965 Fort Carson was home to 9,658 soldiers; in March 1967 it housed 24,735 soldiers. How many of those were Seventh-day Adventist is impossible to know, but it was enough for the General Conference to decide to create an Adventist servicemen’s center in the new building, a space for soldiers to get away from the hubbub of Army life from sundown Friday night to sundown Saturday night.

Thus, the General Conference gave the Colorado Springs Central Church a grant to furnish rooms in the new building for use by Adventist servicemen over the Sabbath hours. Two rooms with bunks for fifteen men, a lounge area, and men’s bathroom located off the east end of the fellowship hall were designated for the men. Presumably they were allowed to use the church kitchen and dine in the fellowship hall.

Servicemen’s Centers

The concept of Adventist servicemen’s centers dates back to World War II, when returning missionaries, usually fleeing the Japanese invasion in Asia, were designated camp pastors and assigned to locations near Army training camps where they could offer spiritual support and counseling to Adventist soldiers in training. Only a few servicemen’s centers from that era are known to have been acquired. Returned missionary H. A. Hansen and his wife bought a house in Salt Lake City, Utah,  to which soldiers were invited. A center was also set up in Neosho, Missouri, near Camp Crowder.

In the 1950’s, more centers were set up, which were typically hosted by a pastor and his wife. There is much yet to be learned about these facilities, including the precise location of many of them. Some were as simple as the arrangement in Colorado Springs, but in other locations houses were purchased. In the case of Takoma Park, Maryland, a purpose-built building was constructed for those stationed around Washington D.C., and participants in Operation Whitecoat, the Army’s medical research program in which Adventists volunteered to be test subjects, at Fort Detrick. In 1962 there were six centers: Anchorage, Alaska; Biloxi, Mississippi; Fort Ord, California; Frankfurt, Germany; Honolulu, Hawaii; and San Antonio, Texas. By 1970 there were eight: Colorado Springs, Colorado; Frankfurt, Germany; Fort Lewis, Washington; Okinawa, Japan; Saigon, Vietnam; San Antonio, Texas; Seoul, Korea; and Takoma Park, Maryland.

As the war in Vietnam wound to its controversial end, Adventist servicemen’s centers in the United States started closing, although those in Germany, Korea, and Japan would serve American soldiers assigned to overseas installations well into the 2000s. When Ron Baptist came home from academy in 1973, the two rooms designated for servicemen in the Colorado Springs Central Seventh-day Adventist Church had already been converted to the local church’s use.

—Sabrina Riley is an independent researcher and consultant in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her current research interests include the Seventh-day Adventist military experience and her family’s genealogy. She may be reached at The Family Archivist: https://www.familyarchivist.net. Republished with permission from OUTLOOK Adventist News June 8, 2025, article. Photo supplied.