Pathfinders Experience Health Everlasting

Contributed by Angeline D. Brauer, DrPH, MHS, RDN

Believing in God’s Promises for Health

At the 2024 International Pathfinder Camporee, over 1,000 Pathfinders and enthusiasts took part in the piloting of a new Pathfinder honor on health evangelism.  This interactive booth gave participants the opportunity to learn about the Adventist “health message” through Scripture, scientific research, artistic creativity, mission stories, prayer, and even preaching!  And the results are pretty clear — it was an incredible experience all around.

This new honor began with an idea from the Upper Columbia Conference Health Ministries and Pathfinder leadership, Cindy Williams and Luke Torquato, respectively.  Cindy currently serves in her health ministries role and as nurse and health educator for Upper Columbia Academy in Spangle, Washington.  She is also the Pathfinder club director at the Upper Columbia Academy church, and led a group of 3 clubs with 72 participants to the Camporee.

Early in the planning process, Cindy reached out to the North American Division (NAD) Health Ministries Director, Angeline Brauer, to see about collaborating on the “Health Evangelism” Pathfinder honor.  With mutual excitement, a 30-foot by 30-foot booth space was quickly reserved, and we began figuring out details for how to best move hundreds of people through the area each day.

Learning about health while we are young is a good predictor of healthy behaviors as an adult, so one of our goals was to make this fun and engaging.  We wanted to make sure the kids who came through the honor learned something practical, but that the experience would also make a positive impact on them.  We were also excited about incorporating mission stories and practical skills in the honor.  It’s not easy to do that, while still keeping within a reasonable timeframe, but we came up with a system to do that.

The honor was organized into two main parts.  Participants began with working through a printed learning guide that included readings and questions from Scripture, Spirit of Prophecy, and scientific literature.  They were then able to select one of four activity stations: 1) creation station, where they created a poster or board game; 2) missions map, where they watched videos of health missionaries from around the world; 3) prayer tree, where they learned about the healing power of prayer and wrote their own personal prayer requests; or 4) center stage, where they prepared and presented a brief health talk.  It took an average of 75-90 minutes to complete the full honor.  Those who completed the honor were given a pilot Pathfinder honor patch and/or a special limited edition trading pin produced by the NAD.

We couldn’t have done this without considerable amount of effort from several teams.  The NAD Professional Services team provided the design and printing of the various stations, which received rave compliments from many participants and passers-by.  The NAD Information Technology Services team was also on site to help provide various technology tools and support.  And over 40  generous volunteers, who had already planned on being at Camporee, gave freely of a few hours throughout the week and made the experience worth remembering.  We were pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response to the request for volunteers that was sent out through the NAD Health Ministries email newsletter.  And even more elated by the kindness and graciousness of everyone who gave their time — some were there almost every day.

The next step for the Health Evangelism honor is to have it approved by the Pathfinders Honors Committee.  In order to do so, surveys were taken of nearly 300 participants who completed the honor to gain insight on how the honor could be improved.  One Pathfinder from the Stonehill Knights Club shared that this honor “needs to be taught to more teens/people” and another from the Trailblazers Club in Jamaica felt that “it is a very fun honor to do.”  When asked how they can apply the information learned, a Pathfinder from the Brownsburg Beacons responded “living my life with trust in God, and going outside on sunny days.”

Although the honor was produced for the Pathfinder age group of 10-12 year olds, younger and older individuals participated.  A Club Leader from the Cherokee Pathfinders shared that the honor was “able to help [me] understand that God is concerned about all of me.”  A Pathfinder Counselor from the Peacemakers Club shared that they learned about “the power of health evangelism and the positive impact it can make to others.”

Reflecting back on the entire experience, Mrs. Williams shared “We are feeling overwhelmed with joy at the positive response to the honor.  It turned out so much more wonderfully than we anticipated, and we thank God for bringing all the pieces and people together to make it a positive experience.”

NAD Health Ministries has already received requests to host the entire honor at other events for Pathfinders and adults, and we are looking at ways to make it more accessible for local churches to do as well.  For the NAD, this tool will be part of a larger set of resources to help churches be more effective in health-focused evangelistic efforts.  This is just one piece in a larger bank of resources we are preparing for our churches and wider community.