WS Chronicle

The Ephesus Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church and Pastor Allen Baldwin will host the Ephesus Junior Academy (EJA) Annual Alumni Day on Saturday, Nov. 17.

Alumni anxiously await this event each year, as it is a time for old friends to meet, greet, fellowship, reminisce over their glory days as powerful young people at Ephesus, and to give back. They share details about challenges, experiences, and successful outcomes for which they were prepared as a result of the education received at the Academy.

Harvey Staplefoote, alumni president, announced that Alumnus Elder Damien Gardner will deliver the 11 a.m. Sabbath worship message. Elder Gardner grew up in Winston-Salem, where he attended Ephesus Junior Academy for preschool and kindergarten and then again for fourth through seventh grades under the tutelage of Elder Bravett Lyles, then principal and now EJA School Board chair. He graduated from Wiley Middle School and was a Crosby Scholar at his alma mater, R.J. Reynolds High School.

At the George Washington University (GWU) in Washington, D.C., Elder Gardner received Bachelor of Arts degrees in Psychology and International Affairs, with a concentration in Conflict and Security, and a minor in Religion, concentration in Conflict and Security, and a minor in Religion, concentration in Islam.  

Elder Gardner then served as an officer in the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service at the end of President George W. Bush’s administration, assigned to the White House.

Elder Gardner was ordained in 2009 as a minister at First Seventh-day Adventist Church in Northwest Washington, D.C. Assisted by his wife, Rachelle Odom Gardner, he currently serves at the Woodbridge Seventh-day Adventist Church in Woodbridge, Virginia, where Elder Lola Moore-Johnston is the pastor.

Elder Gardner has said his goal in life is to live out the call of God upon him as a minister, husband, father, and protector.

Elder Gardner is father to Akira, age 7, and Eliana, age 4.