Speaker: Anthony Perdomo, New York, New York
Tell us about yourself and why you chose to come to this AYP mission trip.
Anthony Perdomo: Hello, my name is Anthony Perdomo. I'm 18 years old and I'm from New York. I've been a Seventh-day Adventist my entire life. I've been born, born and raised. Um and I decided to do this AYP mission trip because although I have been Seventh-day Adventist my entire life, I do feel like I've been kind of excluded from like the national and uh worldwide Adventist community as I've only ever been to my church and I haven't really explored uh a lot of the Adventist communities. So I felt like this would be a perfect opportunity to meet new people who are also uh Adventist and share my same, the same faith as me so that I can um expand my knowledge, learn new things about how other like people um interpret the Bible and everything. And I just felt like it would be a great opportunity to explore um more about my religion and learn more about God.
What was the most impactful moment of your mission trip and why?
Anthony Perdomo: and after church, we decided to do some door to door mission work, you know, going up to different houses in the community and talking to them about the word of God to getting some answers about some questions we made for helping the community out and um spreading the message and we were doing a lot of houses, a lot of people were saying no, a lot of people didn't answer, but we met this one guy who was really nice. Um we weren't going to go to his house at first, but something, I don't know, I had a feeling that we should go to his house and we should knock on that door and we did. And what ended up happening is he ended up inviting us into his home. We sat down, we had a long conversation about um the, you know, the Adventist Church, the community and everything. And um he gave me his number and um he's definitely gonna see uh the church and check it out. And um try to, you know, maybe even learn more about the Adventist community. I think it was such a great moment because um help me understand how many people really do need the message and really do need to learn more about God. But they don't take the initiative unless people like us go and help them and try to push them to take the initiative.
How did this mission trip strengthen your faith?
Anthony Perdomo: In these days that I've been in this mission trip, I have definitely improved my faith a lot. And um this was done in a lot of ways. First off, in my hometown, there are not a lot of Adventists. I do not have a lot of Adventist friends. Most people don't even know what it is to be a Seventh-day Adventist. And so um as I go on through my day, I barely get enough talk about my religion. I barely get enough um you know, knowledge about my religion and that is from church. So going into this mission I met with so many great people that are also Adventist that come from different places and share the same personalities as me. And I feel as if because I've been surrounded by such knowledgeable people in my faith, I was able to learn more about, you know, how it really is to be an Adventist and what's so great about it and what's so great about, you know, going out and doing work and spreading the Gospel and everything. Uh And that really did help me with my faith. It helped grow my faith. And now I'm even stronger with God.
How do you plan to apply what you've learned from this mission trip in your daily life?
Anthony Perdomo: This trip has taught me a lot about what it is to really be an Adventist and to really be into your faith and spreading, spreading the faith. And so, um one thing that I really did learn from this trip and I am going to use throughout my life now is um to not be ashamed and not be scared of your own faith and of God. A lot of the times we were in public, we were um going door to door uh teaching people about our faith or we were doing um services outside as well. People looking at us people, you know, sometimes they might think we're weird but we shouldn't be ashamed of um our religion. We shouldn't be ashamed of spreading the Word of God to other people because that is what's gonna get us into Heaven and that's what God wants us to do. So I think that from this trip, I definitely learned how to not be scared of my own faith and my own actions. And I am definitely going to be applying that throughout my life from now on.
What's your message to someone considering whether they should come to the next AYP mission trip?
Anthony Perdomo: My message to anybody who's planning on going to the next AYP mission trip is to just do it. 100%. Don't think about it, just go for it. It's a great experience. You learn a lot of new things. Not only do you learn more about God, more about Seventh-day Adventist Church and more about just life in general. But you also get great experiences that help you build more confidence. You learn about social skills. You meet new people who are the same faith as you. These people are really intelligent, they have great minds. It's AYP -Adventist Young Professionals. These people are professional people who do great things for a living and still are able to maintain themselves in churches - in the Seventh-day Adventist Church and help lead the mission to convert a lot of other people to our church. It's a great experience. You go out, you have fun, you visit new places that you've never been to before and you're able to connect and just have a lot of laughs.
