SDA Church world leader arrives Wednesday

PIC: Pastor Ted Wilson is expected in Uganda on Wednesday

RELIGION | VISIT

KAMPALA- The world leader of Seventh-day Adventist Church, Pastor Ted Wilson, will arrive in Uganda on Wednesday afternoon on a five-day pastoral visit. He will be accompanied by his wife Nancy Wilson.

Wilson, who is the president of the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, on his mission to impact Uganda with Jesus, will climax his visit with a grand worship on Saturday at Kololo ceremonial grounds.

The general conference, based in Maryland, US, is the governing body of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It co-ordinates the global ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It is also responsible for the spiritual and developmental plans of the church around the world.

On arrival at Entebbe International Airport, Pr Wilson will address a press conference at the VIP lounge. He will make a stopover at Pennial Beach Entebbe, where he will meet some church leaders. In the evening, Wilson will be hosted to a dinner at Speke Resort Munyonyo in Kampala.

On Thursday morning, he will speak to the youth under a theme "Youth connect" at Bugema, an Adventist Chartered University, before flying to Lira in the afternoon and Jinja Central Church.

Wilson will travel to Kasese to address church members, leaders on Friday and commission a multi-billion Better Living Centre by the Seventh-Day Adventists Rwenzori Field. He will return to Kampala to meet President Yoweri Museveni.

Wilson was nominated in June 2010 by the church's 246-member nominating committee and elected by the General Conference session delegation consisting an international body of 2,410 appointed members.

He succeeded Jan Paulsen, who had served as president since 1999.

On July 3, 2015, at the 60th session of the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in San Antonio, Wilson was re-elected for a second five-year term.

Who is Ted Wilson?

Ted N.C. Wilson was elected as president of the Seventh-day Adventist world church in July 2010 during the General Conference Session in Atlanta, US.

Born in Takoma Park, Maryland on May 10, 1950, the son of former Adventist world church President Neal C. Wilson and Elinor E. Wilson, Wilson spent part of his childhood in Egypt.

He began his church career as a pastor in 1974 in the Greater New York Conference. He married Nancy Louise Vollmer Wilson in 1975. The couple has three daughters and 10 grandchildren.

Wilson served as the assistant director and then director of Metropolitan Ministries in New York from 1976 to 1981. He served in the then Africa-Indian Ocean Division, based in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, until 1990 as a departmental director and later as executive secretary.

Following his post in West Africa, Wilson served for two years at the Adventist world church's world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, US, as an associate secretary. He served as the president of the church's Euro Asia-Division in Moscow, Russia from 1992 to 1996.

Pastor Wilson returned to the US to serve as president of the Review and Herald Publishing Association in Hagerstown, Maryland until his election as an Adventist world church vice-president in 2000.

An ordained minister, Wilson holds a doctor of philosophy degree in religious education from New York University, a master of divinity degree from Andrews University, and a Master of Science degree in public health from the Loma Linda University School of Public Health. In addition to English, he speaks French and some Russian.