Pastor Nyaniso James Siwani passed away on April 15, 2017. He was General Secretary of the South Africa Conference when they joined the SDB World Federation in 1986. He was delegate to the WF Sessions in 1986 in the United States, 1992 in New Zealand, 1997 in Jamaica, and 2003 in Brazil, serving as WF Vice President for Africa 1997-2008 and attending the Full Executive Committee meeting in 2005 in Michigan, US. In that role he published several issues of a newsletter Voice of Africa which promoted organization of the SDB Africa General Conference and reported on its four meetings (1992, 1994, 1996, and 2001).
We hope that by now, all Seventh Day Baptists are aware that the next Sessions of the Seventh Day Baptist World Federation are scheduled for Brazil, January 22-28, 2017. That is a mere 8 months away. We also know that if one is keeping abreast of international news these days, the country of Brazil is regularly featured in at least two uncomplimentary ways. The first one is that the country’s Senate voted last week (May 19) to suspend its President, Mrs. Dilma Rousseff, and begin an impeachment trial against her. The turbulence leading up to this latest political move, has led to Brazil’s worst economic crisis in decades. It causes some people to wonder if Brazil is a secure and stable place to visit at this time.
At their online meeting January 17, the World Federation Executive Committee voted to recommend to member Conferences that they accept the Seventh Day Baptist Uganda Conference as a member of the Federation. Uganda’s application reports 11 churches and 10 cell groups in three regions across the country, 6 ordained ministers and 3 unordained, 239 members plus many children, some of them in one of the three schools operated by the Conference: a junior school, an orphanage/elementary school, and a high school/vocational school.