Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[J.R. Layman]

I remember well, Ernestine Tenny when she was in the 9 or 10 grade at White Memorial School in Portland Maine, in 1960, I was in the 5th grade.  Even then, she was the most kind and considerate "Christian" anyone would ever wish to meet.  Glad to hear that Mark and her are doing something in the NNEC!

[Gailon Arthur Joy]

Mark was my inspiration as a teenager. First got to meet him at a Youth Rally in NNEC and he had just returned from Brazil where he had served as AUC's first ever Student Missionary for a summer. Everyone was thrilled to support the AUC Student Missionary program and he was a terrific representative as he presented his one hour slide show.

After meeting him personally after the show, I clearly wanted to walk in that man's footsteps and opted to pay the price for a private parochial school education. That meant I had to work as my parents were not practicing Seventh-day Adventists and I treasured every moment of the experience. PVA had just opened and was expensive but offered a work study program and a "Lawroweld" campus out in the Hills of New Braintree.
 
As a senior we had the opportunity to work with Mark again, this time as the conference evangelist for SNEC. He put on a very early version of the "Share Him" program and the students did many of the presentations. We also did much of the weekend door-knocking and visitation and used the old slide projector bible study programs.

During my college years I did the Campus Crusade for Christ program and had the great opportunity of trying to keep up with Elder Ron Halvorsen in New York City. That man was the most Christ Centered and motivated evangelist I have ever met. You could not keep step with his daily pace!!! The church got a real bargain with this man...he worked from sun-up til well after sun-down evey day. Many times he would be doing two evangelistic campaigns daily. I will never forget him standing on a park bench in Battery Park preaching the gospel from his old worn leather bound Bible right there in the Park as a crowd gathered while we passed out literature inviting people to a pending effort in lower Manhattan. This was in the Vietnam protest era and the mounties showed up, but when we told them who he was, they just nodded and moved on.

Later, I was to find out that Mark Finley was well known for doing as many as three evangelistic presentations daily and still doing the visitation and prayer warrior programs.
These are two men that will die with their boots on and a Bible in the hand, preaching the Gospel in the tradition of Joseph Bates, Stephen Haskell and so many other pioneers with roots and ethics born in the Atlantic Union. Finley and Halvorsen are both AUC Grads.  That generation will be sorely missed and I fear that I do not see replacements coming quickly onto the scene. Guess that means we will have to pick up the slack, God Willing!!!

Gailon Arthur Joy

[inga]

Later, I was to find out that Mark Finley was well known for doing as many as three evangelistic presentations daily and still doing the visitation and prayer warrior programs.
These are two men that will die with their boots on and a Bible in the hand, preaching the Gospel in the tradition of Joseph Bates, Stephen Haskell and so many other pioneers with roots and ethics born in the Atlantic Union. Finley and Halvorsen are both AUC Grads.  That generation will be sorely missed and I fear that I do not see replacements coming quickly onto the scene. Guess that means we will have to pick up the slack, God Willing!!!

Gailon Arthur Joy

Thanks, Gailon, for rounding out the picture and telling the other side of the story from that which J.R. Layman told.

It looks to me as though the Atlantic Union has produced somd of the very worst and the very best in Adventism.

And the devil is working hard to ensure that no more of "the best" will come out of AUC. But then, God is stronger! 

Thanks also for sharing how the "AU Reporter" was born. (Thanks, J.R. for getting this conversation going beyond current charges.)

[J.R. Layman]

Gailon...

Re:"Lawroweld" campus out in the Hills of New Braintree" 

Ouch...I was spoiled by going to SLA, in South Lancaster on the campus of AUC, the previous year that PVA was opened.  Sorry....but PVA being out in the country, on that windswept hill......(No Rowell’s grocery store right off campus for munchies!)  I lasted about 2 or 3 weeks at PVA and said to myself, "upchuck this!"  PVA was a prison as compared to SLA in South Lancaster......  I didn't even call home, simply told the dean I was leaving......so he at least gave me a ride to the Bus Station in Worcester......I would have simply stuck my thumb out...to get off that forlorn windswept hill in New Braintree!  Greater New York Academy in NYC was an interesting experience for that year.

I'd get to the corner for a bus ride to the Hempstead Long Island RR station at about 6:30.......Had my breakfast at the Breakstone Coffee shop in Woodside.....(cup of coffee and a buttered kieser roll) and got to school at GNYA about 8:30.    After school, I'd take the subway to Times Square....walk over to the Adventist "Times Square Center"  on 46th St. 3 blocks off of Broadway (NOT to be confused with the "New York Center" on 47th st. [half a block off Broadway]  which was a Seventh Day Adventist Church....and Evangelism Center)  which was the center for the Jewish work in NYC....under the direction of Dr. Jay Hoffman......where I had a job printing...... had to take a subway S. to Penn. Station and then get the LIRR to Hempstead to get home about 10:00 PM!

OTOH....my now 21 y/o daughter says she wants to get her Ph.D. in NYC ......I've told her, NO WAY are we going to support you getting your graduate education in NYC.....!!!!   Been there, done that....but no way am I going to let my kid live in NYC for 3 years!     I told her to move to Seattle!

Frankly, I thought it was quite apt, that the Massachusetts State Police bought Pioneer Valley Academy for their Police Academy! Even though my former  lawyer (an SDA)  in S. Lancaster absconded with the funds that the SNEC thought they got, from the sale of PVA (at least he was convicted and got some jail time!). ….