“Draw Closer to God” will be the theme for two upcoming weekends at the Dee Events Center in Ogden.

The facility will be packed with Jehovah’s Witnesses who will be attending two annual district conventions.

Events will center around the New Testament scripture James 4:7-8.

“Subject yourselves, therefore, to God; but oppose the Devil, and he will flee from you,” reads the scripture. “Draw close to God, and he will draw close to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you indecisive ones.”

“That scripture helps us out,” said Richard Wolf, an elder in the Spanish congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses and a worker in the faith’s news service. “If we draw to God, he’s really going to help us out and draw to us.”

“When we imitate God’s qualities, we learn to be better communicators,” said Francisco Montano Jr., an elder in the Spanish congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses and a worker in the faith’s news service. “It helps us in the family level and the church level. When we apply those principles of unity, it avoids any possible conflict that could apply.”

A public talk each of the Sundays will center on helping people draw closer to God. Also each of the Sundays will be full-costume dramatizations about when Jerusalem was destroyed and all the Christians left.

A main event Saturday will be a public baptism of those who wish to be members of Jehovah’s Witness congregations.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have been coming to Ogden for their district conventions since 1981 and report that Ogden has been gracious to them.

Members hope many in the community will join them for some or all of their events.

June 26-27 will be a Spanish-speaking convention followed by an English-speaking convention July 3-4.

Three new Hispanic groups from Rawlings, Wyo., and Bozeman, Mont., and Vernal will join the convention this year.

“It will be a nice treat to have these Hispanics coming out,” Wolf said. These groups previously attended convention in Omaha, Neb.

“They are excited not to have to drive so far,” Wolf said.

A total of 12,000 are expected to visit Ogden for the two events, each lasting Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Area residents are invited to join the faith’s many travelers from throughout the Intermountain West for the free events.

The two conventions will be the same except for the language in which they are conducted. Each day’s activities begin at 9:20 a.m.

At the present time, Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout the convention area are extending personal invitations to as many as possible to attend the event. They are handing out special tracts just like those that are used throughout the world for similar events.

Currently, there are 105,000 different Jehovah’s Witness congregations in the world that serve 7.3 million members.

A news release about the event stated that Witnesses look forward to welcoming many non-Witnesses to the convention and believe that all who attend will benefit from the practical and timely information presented.

Wolf said the conventions in the Dee Event Center have traditionally been so successful that they are used as a model for the rest of the United States.

Throughout the continental United States, there will be 357 conventions in 90 cities.

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