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STANLEY PRAIMNATH REMEMBERS 9-11

ATHIEST TURNS CAMPUS MISSIONARYPAGE 4

LIVING A FULL LIFE FOLOWING CANCER PAGE 3 • MARRIED 75 YEARS, STILL QUIPPING PAGE 6 • SENIOR ADULTS AREN’T FINISHED YET

PAGE 7 • THIS WEEK IN AG HISTORY PAGE 8

THE BACKYARD MISSION FIELDPAGE 5

ILLUSTRATED BIBLE PROVES TO BE THE RIGHT BIBLEPAGE 5

A COLLECTION OF THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES FROM PENEWS.ORG

SUNDAY,SEPT. 11,2016

THIS WEEK IN AG HISTORYBY RUTHIE EDGERLY OBERG

Sixty-five years ago, General Superintendent Wesley Steelberg opened the 24th General Council of the Assemblies of God in Atlanta, Georgia, with a plea to remain true to “our dual spiritual heritage in Pentecost.”

Steelberg’s address showed concern over the direction of the broader culture and church world. He prayed that “the Assemblies of God may not drift in the swift current of worldliness towards the precipice of apostasy.” He encouraged listeners to instead “stand true to God.”

Even before Steelberg spoke, the platform was nearly filled with people on their knees in prayer. Delegates started singing “All Hail the Power

of Jesus’ Name and God’s presence became palpable. Crowds at the altar “stood in God’s presence and lifted up their voices in united praise to the Lord.” The prayer was reminiscent of the Book of Acts and sounded “as the mighty rush of many waters.”

Steelberg identified two important aspects of the Pentecostal movement’s heritage: 1) the gift of the presence of the Holy Ghost; and 2) the faith of our forefathers. He admonished hearers to not neglect this heritage.

Read Steelberg’s full address, “Our Dual Spiritual Heritage,” on pages 3-4 and 13-14 of the Sept. 9, 1951, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel online at s2.ag.org/sept91951.

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Fifteen years after the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Stanley Praimnath still remembers the event as if it happened yesterday. While the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacking and subsequent crashes of four commercial jets are seared in the memories of Americans, Praimnath had a graphic up-close view.

As he sat at his 81st-floor desk in the south tower of the World Trade Center, the bottom wing of United Airlines Flight 175 plunged through a doorway, only 20 feet from his office space as assistant vice president of loan operations at Fuji Bank Ltd. In the ensuing minutes, Praimnath wended his way through the rubble, down the smoked-filled stairs, reaching the outdoors moments before the building collapsed.

By escaping the likelihood of being crushed by falling concrete, electrocuted, or incinerated, Praimnath became the most notable Assemblies of God constituent to survive the Sept. 11 attack.

Praimnath continues to work full-time in midtown Manhattan, for the

past 13 years as loan administrator for another Japanese firm. He still speaks regularly at churches on weekends.

“I have never stopped thinking about that day in all these years,” Praimnath says. “There is one image that I can never shake and it still haunts me.”

Praimnath escaped his trapped office with help from Brian Clark, who worked at a brokerage firm on the 84th floor. Arm in arm, the two men descended 1,620 steps. Around the 46th floor, they encountered a man with a broken back, lying in a pool of blood. A security guard stayed with the man and urged Praimnath and Clark to send help once they reached outside. Praimnath told the guard the building would blow up, but the guard responded that steel wouldn’t burn.

The unidentified wounded man told Praimnath to tell his wife and baby that he loved them.

“I hear that cry every night before I go to sleep, and the image is vivid in my mind,” Praimnath says. “I could not help that man. The security guard could have chosen to escape, but he stayed with that man. They both

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STANLEY PRAIMNATH REMEMBERS 9-11BY JOHN W. KENNEDY

T H E A B C s O F S A L V A T I O N

ACCEPT that you are a sinner, and God’s punishment for yoursin is death and separation from God forever.

BELIEVE that Jesus paid God’s price for your sin when He died on the cross.

CONFESS “Jesus, I believe You are who the Bible and historydeclares Your are – the Son of God. I humble myself and surrender to You. Forgive me. Make me spiritually whole. Change my life. Amen.”

SENIOR ADULTS AREN’T FINISHED YETBY MEL SURFACE

More than 800 older adults took part in the first National Senior Adults Conference in the 102-year history of the Assemblies of God, Aug. 29-31, in Branson, Missouri.

The event far exceeded anything the planners had imagined, according to Wes Bartel, national director of the AG’s Senior Adult Ministries. The original registration target of 600 was surpassed in the first six weeks, and, though the ministry added 200 more slots at substantial cost, registrations reached the absolute limit by the end of eight weeks. Bartel said another 1,600 wanting to register after the cutoff had to be turned away.

The conference was designed primarily to place an emphasis on the value of seniors, bringing them together to help them see God isn’t finished with them, according to Bartel.

“We have seniors scattered all over the nation, and they seldom have the opportunity of relating to and enjoying fellowship with brothers and sisters in their same age group,” Bartel said.

The event drew seniors from 34

states, including 240 from Missouri, 114 from Texas, and 80 from Ohio.

Bartel said he heard numerous seniors at the conference express sentiments that they didn’t feel their ministry work was over.

Four Assemblies of God national executives developed the conference theme, “It’s About Time,” in evening and morning services. General Superintendent George O. Wood opened by preaching a sermon titled “It’s Your Time,” in which he examined the Bible characters Simeon and Anna as models of senior adults passionate about God, focused on His promises, and faithful in His service despite situations they couldn’t approve.

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Nick Hester began his first year at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) in Huntsville, Texas, in 2009 as an atheist. Upon graduation, he had become a Chi Alpha campus missionary in training.

He enrolled at SHSU angry, bitter, and opposed to God. Yet Paige, his then-girlfriend and now-wife, had a different outlook, the result of being raised in a Christian home.

“She would always tell me Jesus was the answer and subtly share the gospel,” Hester says. “She was praying for me to find Christian community.”

His sophomore-year-roommate Kyle McGuire invited Hester to a SHSU Chi Alpha meeting. The leader asked attendees about their beliefs.

“I told them that God wasn’t real, and that if He was, He hated me,” Hester recalls.

Hester says the leader looked him in the face and welcomed his presence to the gathering.

“It was the first time I’d experienced conviction,” Hester says.

Hester started attending Chi Alpha meetings every week, and McGuire

taught him how to pray and study the Bible.

Before his junior year, Hester was baptized. The following spring he trained to become a Chi Alpha small group leader for his senior year.

After graduation in 2013, Hester married Paige and then began a yearlong intern program. In August 2016, the couple accepted an offer to become the first full-time pastor at the Chi Alpha chapter at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

“Our first marching orders are the most important: to be small group leaders, to befriend these students, and just live life with them,” Hester says. He hopes to stem the tide of young adults turning away from faith and is confident the Chi Alpha model can play a major role.

“Students tell me church is boring, but being entertaining isn’t the answer,” says Hester, now a candidate missionary. “Chi Alpha’s programming is more than teaching, it’s more than comfort. It’s about friends and Christian community.”

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ATHEIST TURNS CAMPUS MISSIONARYBY RACHEL DAWN HAYES

THE BACKYARDMISSION FIELDBY ERIC TIANSAY

After serving as a professional educator for more than 30 years, Sherrie Burnette Nickell has concluded that schools are the most overlooked mission field in the country.

Nickell, who recently retired as superintendent of public schools in Polk County, Florida, now serves as education professor at Southeastern University in Lakeland.

“It is easy to label traditional mission fields: a village in Africa or India, for example,” says Nickell, 57. “What we sometimes fail to realize is that pertaining to the Great Commission, Jesus challenged us to start with our own Jerusalem. There are thousands of Christian educators throughout our country who can serve as salt and light.”

As Polk County school superinten-dent, Nickell encouraged ministries and churches to make inroads in area schools as a mission field.

Plenty of opportunities existed to partner with faith-based organizations, says Nickell, a member of Victory Church in Lakeland. While direct evangelizing couldn’t happen, a local church “adopted” a nearby neighborhood elementary school. The church provided tutors and mentors to come into the school each week, as well as a clothes closet where children received specific items such as jackets or shoes.

ILLUSTRATED BIBLE PROVES TO BE THE RIGHT BIBLEBY DAN VAN VEEN

Ministering to children who are deaf and helping them to learn about Jesus and God’s love for them is no easy task — especially when the children typically have no better than a second-grade reading level and live in Mexico.

However, that hasn’t stopped Randy and Linda Lindsey, Assemblies of God missionaries who have been ministering to children who are deaf — along with their families — in Mexico City for nearly a decade. In fact, just a few years ago, the Lindseys established the very first Assemblies of God church for the deaf in all of Mexico!

Recently, Light for the Lost made it easier for the Lindseys to communicate the Bible to Mexican children who are deaf by providing the funds to buy La Biblia en Acción (The Action Bible) to give to children and their families. This specialized Bible, described as the perfect Bible for visual learners, presents 215 fully illustrated stories from the Bible, in chronological order — beginning with Creation and ending with an invitation to open the door for Jesus as He stands and knocks.

In a letter to Light for the Lost (LFTL), the Lindseys stated, “Thank you so much . . . The Spanish picture Bibles [Action Bibles] help deaf people to be able to understand the Bible more easily.”

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perished.”Praimnath has repeated the account

of God’s protection hundreds of times. His testimony has a twin purpose of evangelizing the unsaved and providing comfort to the afflicted.

“I honestly feel with all my fiber and being that I have a job to do, a task to perform, that has not ended yet,” Praimnath says. “Everybody needs to hear that good story of grace, unmerited love, and deliverance, and I am that person who can say it like nobody else because I lived through the destruction.”

In 2001, Praimnath served as a deacon and Sunday School superintendent at Bethel Assembly of God in South Ozone Park in Queens,

New York. Today, he is associate pastor at the church, where the father of his wife, Jennifer, is senior pastor.

Praimnath, 59, obtained AG ministerial credentials in an effort to be more qualified to share his story in pulpits. He never asks to go anywhere; churches have extended all invitations.

As a survivor, Praimnath had free sessions of counseling from a company medical plan, but he went to only three. After he told his tale of escape to the counselor at the first session she wound up in tears, and he had to comfort her. Praimnath says the Lord healed him of the trauma he experienced.

“My job is to bring comfort to souls in distress,” Praimnath says.

MARRIED 75 YEARS, STILL QUIPPINGJOHN W. KENNEDY

LIVING A FULL LIFE FOLLOWING CANCER BY DARLA KNOTH

U.S. Navy machinist repairman Bruce Gunn made a vow to God following a Japanese kamikaze plane attack that damaged the PT boat on which he served during World War II.

“I looked up and said, ‘Lord, if you get me through this, I’ll serve you,’ ” Gunn recalls.

The 50-year ministerial certificate in Gunn’s den attests to his faithfulness in keeping the promise.

The 95-year-old Gunn, and his 92-year-old wife, Elizabeth “Pat” Gunn, have lived in the retirement community of Maranatha Village in Springfield, Missouri, for more than a decade. They went to high school together in Detroit, and eloped when Bruce was 19 and Pat 16. The couple celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary in March.

Bruce says he always felt content working as “second fiddle” in ministry, with 37 of those 55 years at Brightmoor Christian Church in the Detroit suburb of Novi, Michigan. He started as youth leader and finished ministering to seniors, under Thomas E. Trask, who went on to become general superintendent of the U.S. Assemblies of God from 1993-2007.

“He loved people and people loved

him,” remembers Trask. “Whether he visited people in the hospital or met their material needs, Bruce was dedicated.”

Physically, the Gunns have challenges. Pat uses a walker, has an aching hip that’s been replaced, and struggles with neuropathy in her feet. Bruce is blind in one eye, has congestive heart failure and arthritis, and finds walking difficult. But both of them remain sharp mentally.

The Gunns continue to live independently and they stay young, in part, because of kidding each other.

“We’ve never had an argument, although people could hear our discussions three or four blocks away,” Bruce jokes.

“I don’t talk back,” Pat chimes in. “I’d rather ask the Lord to forgive me for what I was thinking rather than to ask forgiveness for what I said.”

Bruce and Pat’s only child, 74-year-old Patricia Bates, is retired and lives in Florida. She has been married for 49 years to Rollie Bates, whose grandfather Alonzo Bates started Brightmore Tabernacle (now Brightmore Christian Church) in Southfield, Michigan, 1929.

Tory Cortese was diagnosed with leukemia at 6. The cancer went into remission, but returned in 2008 when Tory was 10.

A bone marrow transplant, while successful, resulted in Tory needing to stay in isolation for an entire year. Her parents, Rich and Nadine Cortese, were planting Garden City Church in Beverly, Massachusetts. Tory went to church, but had to sit outside.

The cancer is gone now, and Tory is stronger.

“I clung to my faith even when things weren’t going my way,” Tory says. “I dealt with depression. But God became my satisfaction through sickness and loneliness.”

In high school, Tory became a co-leader of the Refuge Bible Club in Beverly High School. In her senior year, Tory started a business to support missionaries by crocheting scarves, hats, headbands, and bracelets.

Tory entered North Central University in Minneapolis this fall. She is considering a missions or church planting major.

“Looking back, my illness was being used for His glory,” Tory says. “It tested my faith, but God has opened doors because I was sick. God might not have always come through like I wanted Him to on a certain day, but I’ve learned joy, patience, and trust.”