When Pastor Selvin Intong approached my husband Alvin and I to be Health Ministries leaders for the Delap Seventh-day Adventist Church in 2021, we agreed. We are both health conscious and active individuals, but we honestly didn't know how to motivate the church members to become health-conscious and active as well.

In the past, I had volunteered to do some hydrotherapy demonstrations that promote immunity, but no one except the pastor and his family attended so I was at a loss as to how to serve my church in this capacity.

When the Guam-Micronesia Mission Health Ministries Department hosted a F5 Challenge in the summer of that year, I did my best to promote it at church, yet apart from my family, only twelve other people participated in the event. Later that year, the GMM Health Ministries and Women’s Ministries departments co-hosted three virtual 5K events. Again, only my family and a hand full of others attended the first two events.

The last of the 5K series was hosted in January 2022. In a desperate attempt to motivate more church members to attend, Alvin and I decided to host a local 5K walk on the two Sundays that fell within the dates of the GMM virtual 5K period. We finally had some success! Both of those walks were well-attended, even though some of the members did not complete the full distance.  

Since then, we have continued doing a 5K walk every other week (12 walks in total) and most of them have been well-attended. In 2021, GMM Health Ministries provided us with a health screening kit which includes medical equipment to measure blood sugar, blood pressure and BMI. We use this kit before every walk to give our members some information about their current health status and thus motivate them to become healthier. The Women's Ministries Department of our church requested that we do the health screening at their prayer-breakfasts every month as well. We have done this on two different occasions so far and plan to continue doing so. In this way, we are serving more of the members that are not yet attending the 5K walks.

Alvin and I are currently exploring ways to encourage more members to attend our 5K events and other ways for them to become more fit and health-conscious, but we would like to thank GMM for their fitness initiatives over the last two years. It was these events that jumpstarted our efforts for an active Health Ministries Department in the Delap SDA Church. We plan for it to only get more active. Komol Tata (Thank You)!