Hundreds of young people from across the Cayman Islands Conference of Seventh-day Adventists were out in their blue Global Youth Day t-shirts as they covered the communities of East End and Cayman Brac. The aim was to impact and “Be the Sermon” ( the hands and feet of Jesus) as they carried out this year’s theme for Global Youth Day (GYD), “Reaching Out – Colors, Cultures, Communities”. It was a rich, wonderful, blessed experience being the hands and feet of Jesus, especially since we had no COVID-19 restrictions in the Cayman Islands. It was a great blessing to see our young people in action doing prayer walks and prayer drive-throughs where they would flag down drivers and pray for them quickly and give them a tract and a specially designed card for GYD. A unique feature in this year’s Global Youth Day activities was “God’s Boutique”, this is an initiative that was started years ago from the East End Seventh-day Adventist Church. Once a month, the church’s Community Service department would be out in the Heritage Park and offer free clothes, soup, and non-perishable food. So the youth decided to continue God’s Boutique, and the churches brought clothes and food items to support. It was a great success.
We thank God for special sponsors who helped the Youth Department raise $1,050 in funds to purchase 10 Foster’s Gift cards of $100 each and 1 $50 gift card. These were given out to specific families recommended to us by the Community Services department of the East End Church. We want to thank Pastor Caple Thompson and Health Ministries Department team who assisted us with free blood pressure and glucose tests. The members of the community also got a special treat where they were able to receive complimentary massages.
We thank the Youth Executive Committee and all the teams that worked together to have a successful GYD 2021. We genuinely want to thank all the fantastic Adventist Youth (AY) leaders and the youth for their outstanding support! We say thank you to the East End Community Services and Community Departments for their tremendous support. We want to say a big shout and thank you to Sis. Lori-Ann Bigham-Street, AY Leader in the Brac, and her team for the beautiful job they did to organize the impact on Cayman Brac. They also got a surprise visit from the Assistant Youth Director of the Cayman Islands Conference, Director Merle Watkins. We were delighted to have our Pastors in attendance, our Executive Secretary, Pastor Andrew Campbell, who prayed before we went out to impact our communities and our President, Pastor Reinaldo Dracket, who brought greetings and encouragement to our young people in our closing exercises. We want to say a huge thank you to our amazing, dynamic 16-year-old youth speaker, Sister Rohannah Riley, the AY leader of the George Town Adventist Church, who reminded us to stay plugged into Jesus and then to go out and share his love every day! Thanks to the talented Kings and Savannah combined Youth Praise Team for blessing us with the singing and the young men who gave their testimonies of the experience.
We pray that God will continue to bless our young people as they will continue “Reaching Out” to Colors, Cultures, Communities and continue to be the hands and feet of Jesus to help someone know how much Jesus loves them and is coming back very soon!
By: Carlon Nyack, Youth Ministries Director l Photo credit: Mikael Hall
