NewsPosted May 29, 2018 Hanoi, Vietnam: Church Opens 7-Story Community Center

By Andrew McChesney, courtesy Adventist Review

Jannie Bekker, a genteel South African with wavy blond hair, was deployed to Vietnam’s capital with $2 million and the momentous task of establishing the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s first “urban center of influence” in the southeast Asian country.

Bekker, however, struggled to find a suitable property in Hanoi. The asking price for a vacant lot topped $2 million and often approached $3 million to $4 million.

Bekker prayed as he made trip after trip to Hanoi from the Singapore-based headquarters of the Adventist Church’s Southeast Asia Union Mission, where he works as special assistant to the president.

Then suddenly someone offered a prime plot of land with a new seven-story building for only $1.8 million — and the rest is history.

Bekker beamed with joy on May 22, 2018, as Adventist Church president Ted N.C. Wilson and other leaders inaugurated the seven-story building, which will house a bookstore, a health food store, a foreign-language school, a music school, a health center, ADRA’s Vietnam headquarters, and meeting halls for two congregations.

“God came through in a more miraculous way than I ever, ever anticipated,” Bekker said. “He gave us more than what we prayed for.”