Today we give thanks to our God for 80 years of spirited ministry. Faith in action, faith that organized, and above all, faith that produced fruit. We gather to praise God and celebrate the vision and courage of those early pioneers in the Lake Region who by God’s grace built a movement that continues to bless lives across this union and beyond. To understand the significance of this special Sabbath celebration and why the regional work became necessary, we must remember the national climate in which our pioneers labored. After the Civil War, the American South created Jim Crow segregation laws and maintained a system of separated but never equal. Between 1865 and 1950, historians have documented roughly 6,500 racial terror lynchings in the United States, including over 4,000 in the southern states between 1877 and 1950. Therefore, evangelizing black communities, especially in the south, was not merely difficult, it was deadly. In this setting, God gave one of our Seventh-day Adventist founding leaders, his servant Ellen G. White, a practical spirit-guided plan so that the gospel could advance despite the fierce opposition. In testimonies to the church volume 9, she wrote, “The best thing will be to provide the colored people who accept the truth with places of worship of their own. Let this plan be followed until the Lord shows us a better plan.” Later she says, “Let the white and colored people be labored for and in separate distinct lines.” Her purpose was not to endorse prejudice or encourage racial segregation but to protect believers and open doors for mission in a hostile society. Decades later, church leaders faced the reality that the Adventist work among African American was still limited by prejudice.