Washington Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

By Craig Carr, Washington Conference vice president for administration

We are very grateful to God that He blessed the Washington Conference with a 5% tithe gain from 2016 to 2017. This is a testimony to the individual and collective faithfulness of people all across western Washington. Praise God!

Doug Bing, conference president, invited Jerry Russell and me to join him in praying specifically for a 5% increase. This is an amount equal to about one million dollars and is a bold prayer that Doug had been praying for all year long.

By January 19, 2018, all of the known reports had been gathered from across the conference, which revealed that we had garnered a 4.97% increase for 2017. “So what is God telling us?” Jerry asked, noting the different of only 0.03%, which is equal to about $6,000.

On Monday, January 22, 2018, I told Jerry that I had had a dream about him over the weekend in which I saw him with arms raised to heaven saying, “We found the $6,000!” We smiled and thought how cool that would be to push us over our goal.

Later that same day, Wagner Cilio approached Jerry with the news that we would be receiving about $10,000 from a new Hispanic group that had not yet turned in their 2017 tithe. This amount took us just over the 5% goal for which we’d prayed; another reminder that God eagerly hears and lovingly answers prayer.

I’m not sure how much my silly dream played into this whole experience, but we were once again reminded that God loves to hear and answer our prayers. Isaiah 65:24 reminds us