Brazilian Adventist young adults of Los Angeles need a reality check. They apparently forgot that their church only holds services in Portuguese, that there are officially only 12 young adults, and that five weeks is not enough time to promote and produce a major event.
They also ignored the fact that some of them are not fluent in English, that they have busy schedules, and that events like the one they dreamed of are just not done very often.
With “Faces of Love,” a youth relationship seminar held at the Los Angeles Brazilian Church in February, young adults defied all of the above assumptions. They left their comfort zones to reach Adventist youth of other cultures.
The event marked the first time the church had held an event in English. With only five weeks to plan this all-day event and promote it conference wide, youth had to deal with language barriers when phoning youth pastors.
“Youth who don’t speak fluent English helped out by contacting the Spanish-speaking churches,” said Kessia Reis, event coordinator. “The biggest surprise to the more than 300 people who attended was the way our youth united to make 'Faces of Love' a reality. I believe that unity was the secret to our success. Young adults in our church are united and we are friends. We hang out Friday nights at Bible study and spend time together Saturday nights. We support each other’s projects. This friendship is evident when you walk into this church."
“When a young person proposed this project, I didn’t think we had enough time for promotion,” said Gustavo Machado, a church member and LLU general surgery resident, “but by God’s grace, I was pleasantly surprised to find that more people came than we expected.”
“A nice problem to have,” added Albert Miller, principal of Rio Lindo Adventist Academy, who presented lectures on love, mature love and relationship readiness. The morning speaker, Enilson Sarli, IT coordinator/webmaster and computer applications teacher at Sierra Adventist Academy, spoke about the biblical view of relationships.
The event was supplemented with games, skits and music.
“’Faces of Love’ was the first project for which we were solely responsible,” said co-coordinator Elise Souza. “We’re excited already about having another one next year. Our goal is to keep youth involved and to win and keep souls for God. This might not increase our membership since we are a Portuguese-speaking church, but we are doing this for the glory of God.”
