Our History

Adventist Jamaicans Abroad (AJA) initially began in April 1999 as a simple, informative, weekly (every Thursday evening) email newsletter, bearing the tagline "Adventist News From Jamaica, and From Jamaicans Abroad."

The publisher was Everton A. Ennis, who, at that time was a transfer student from the former West Indies College (now Northern Caribbean University), and was in his final semester in the Religion and Theology program at Oakwood University in Huntsville, AL. During the run-up to the fearfully anticipated, world-wide catastrophe branded, “the millennial bug," the three traditional Seventh-day Adventist conferences in Jamaica (East, Central, and West) were still in the infancy phase of harnessing the power of the Internet for ministry by establishing a regularly maintained, engaging online presence.

It was during this period that Ennis (a news junky in his own right) longed for regular church news from the homeland. Thus, was born the idea, to personally email (and sometimes phone) the Communication Directors, Presidents, and several pastoral friends in each local conference and the former West Indies Union every week to solicit stories of inspiration and upcoming events that he believed others like him in the Adventist Jamaican diaspora would like to know about. On Thursday evenings, a growing number of personally known fellow AJAs would receive and welcome the simple, yet informative, e-newsletter from him.

This communication hobby and ministry continued after Ennis graduated from Oakwood and matriculated at the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, MI. After graduating from the seminary, Ennis continued sending emails to fellow AJAs upon being called to serve as a pastor in the South Atlantic Conference of SDA in January 2002. In June 2003, realizing that AJA was growing both in terms of the number of subscribers, and the scope of the ministry, he recruited and organized several notable AJAs as a Board of Directors. There was no incorporated organization at this time, however a website was created to publish the news items that were once disseminated via email.

AJA is now a Georgia (USA) non-profit corporation (though not yet a Tax-exempt entity, per the IRS Code) dedicated to providing support to the work of the Seventh-day Adventist Church primarily in Jamaica. This step was taken after Pastor Ennis was transferred to serve in the Metro Atlanta Area in 2014. He soon envisioned the opportunity to take the ministry further, given that numerous resourceful AJAs were geographically available and accessible to help transform and expand the ministry. It was against this backdrop, that in November 2016, Adventist Jamaicans Abroad (International), was incorporated through the Corporations Division of the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State.

The mission of AJA has been expanded to include more than being a news source, in that, the SDA conferences in Jamaica (now five in number, with the organization of the North Jamaica and Northeast Jamaica conferences) were by then doing websites, and later YouTube channels and social media ministries that far exceeded what things looked like in 1999.

Be sure to explore the AJA Mission page by clicking this link!