VANCOUVER – Vancouver's Christian community will be gathering this month at the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre to celebrate Missions Fest 2006, the city's annual global missions conference.

|PIC1|The missions festival and conference, scheduled to take place Jan. 27-29, is organised and supported by numerous churches and volunteers throughout the BC lower mainland and Washington state. The theme for the 2006 conference will be "For the Healing of the Nations," based from Revelations 22:1-2.

"We hold this annual conference to remind us that there is a thirsty world out there seeking to drink of the water of life, the water that will quench the deepest longing of their hearts," writes Richard Dodding, the CEO and a founding director of the Missions Fest in Vancouver, in the opening welcome of the conference's program booklet. "I pray that many will be called by God to go into the world to share the water of life to all who are thirsty."

A wide variety of events will be featured at Missions Fest including organisation exhibits, youth workshops, music, costumes, international flags, seminars and prayer.

|TOP|The weekend's events will also include plenary sessions featuring internationally recognised speakers such as Vishal Mangalwadi, Ian Green, Jim Cantelon, and Majed El Shafie.

"It is a weekend when people of all ages come together to participate in a variety of missions related experiences," explains the conference's website. "Its three-fold purpose is to inform, celebrate and challenge people of all ages to get involved in missions."

The Missions Fest was established in 1984 by six different churches in the Greater Vancouver Area, and has been held annually ever since. Attendance in past conferences was estimated around 30,000 over the three-day event.

For more information regarding the conference, go to www.missionsfestvancouver.ca.






Jeff Skea
Christian Today Correspondent