[ RELIGION ]
Jehovah’s Witnesses
will gather here
Hawaii's Jehovah's Witnesses will host an international convention expected to bring more than 30,000 people to Honolulu in the last two weekends of December.
Delegates from 12 countries, including 4,000 from the mainland, will attend the convention, which will be held in two separate four-day sessions. The church has booked the entire Hawai'i Convention Center for the Dec. 18-21 meeting and will take over the Neal Blaisdell Center for the Dec. 25-28 session, said spokesman Eric Anderson.
This will be the denomination's first international convention in Hawaii since 1978, he said.
"Give God Glory" is the theme of the conference. The program will include Bible-based discussions and testimony about life experiences including talks by people who have been persecuted because of their faith, said Anderson, new service director with the local organization. Costumed dramatizations of scriptural stories and immersion baptisms are also scheduled. All meetings are free and open to nonmembers.
About 1,000 local volunteers are signed up for jobs ranging from airport greeter to cleanup crew at the Blaisdell. A convention office is already open at the church headquarters at 2055 Kam IV Road and can be reached at 842-1100.
English will be the main language on the convention stage, but translators will interpret convention events in languages including Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Ilocano, Samoan, Mandarin and Cantonese, Anderson said.
Although the church members will swell the ranks of Christmas season visitors in Waikiki, they will not be celebrating the religious and secular holiday.
Anderson explained that Jehovah's Witnesses do not observe Christmas because the celebration is not scripturally based. "Historically, Jesus was not born in December, and its roots are pagan; it was adopted from the Roman Saturnalia festival."
Conventions are the highlight of each year for church members, said member David Yap, who returned recently from an international convention in Yokohama attended by 60,000 people. "It's to experience the unity, the love shared. People share their hospitality, the aloha spirit, wherever you are," said Yap, who has also been a delegate to conventions in Milan, Italy, and Australia.
The state's 8,000 Witnesses usually attend annual summer conventions, held in several sessions on each island. There are 100 local congregations.
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