![\"DSC06535\"](\"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/sitenews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/images_news_DSC06535.jpg\" "\\"The")
<\/a>The 95-year-old woman\u2019s announcement surprised Latvian pastor Armands B\u0113rzi\u0146s.<\/p>\nThe woman, Pauline Auni\u0146a, told him that she wanted to turn a two-story house into an Adventist church in Latvia\u2019s capital, Riga, and presented him with pre-World War II ownership papers for the building.<\/p>\n
The year was 1991, and newly independent Latvia was preparing to restore private property rights. The authorities intended to return Soviet-seized property to people with ownership documents.<\/p>\n
Auni\u0146a had those papers, B\u0113rzi\u0146s said. She had been holding onto them since 1972, when the building\u2019s original owner, Anna Terauds, had made the dying wish that her house be transformed into an Adventist church.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had a dream that the red, white and red-striped flag of independent Latvia would once again fly on the streets of Riga,\u201d B\u0113rzi\u0146s said.<\/p>\n
B\u0113rzi\u0146s had never attempted to reclaim property before, but he was willing to try.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, \u2018Why not?\u2019\u201d he said, a slight smile creasing a kindly, well-lined face. \u201cIt took a lot of time and many documents, but we finally secured the property.\u201d<\/p>\n
The account of how a house become a church is among the stories of faithfulness that Latvia\u2019s 4,000 Adventists were remembering this weekend as they celebrated the Adventist Church\u2019s 120th anniversary in this Baltic country of 2 million people.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am happy to say that the first Adventist church in the Russian Empire was in Latvia,\u201d said Vilnis Latgalis, president of the Adventist Church in Latvia. \u201cIt\u2019s a joy to celebrate this anniversary.\u201d<\/p>\n
German-speaking Adventists first brought the church\u2019s message to Riga in the late 19th century, and the first church was established in 1896, he said.<\/p>\n
Terauds wanted to give the building to the church when she died, but no such will could be drafted because the Soviet authorities didn\u2019t recognize the ownership of private property. So she signed a will that simply said she was leaving all that she owned to Auni\u0146a. She also passed the ownership papers to Auni\u0146a.<\/p>\n The ground floor was converted into a church meeting hall and construction work started on a new wing with a 70-seat sanctuary. Auni\u0146a died in 2000 at the age of 104, four years before the sanctuary opened.<\/p>\n \u201cHer dream was fulfilled even though she didn\u2019t live to see it,\u201d said Andris Pe\u0161elis, pastor of Riga\u2019s Seventh-day Adventist Church No. 7, which is located in the building.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was commended for her faith but did not receive what had been promised,\u201d he said, paraphrasing Hebrews 11:39. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mqe3y1YI2Mo<\/a><\/p>\n Sisters Hid Jewish Teen<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cHe was such a hard worker. He never took a vacation during the 50 years of our marriage,\u201d Kleimanis said in an interview after Sabbath worship services.<\/p>\n Ysack Kleimanis was 17 when German forces seized Latvia during World War II. His mother tried to prevent the soldiers from taking the teen away to be shot by falsely claiming that he was 14, said Pe\u0161elis, a longtime friend and a church historian. The soldiers checked his documents, which said he was born in 1924, but then apparently took pity on the mother and sent him to work on a farm outside Riga that produced food for the German army.<\/p>\n After a while, Kleimanis and a friend decided to flee the lightly guarded farm and return to Riga.<\/p>\n With police carrying out surprise house inspections regularly, Kleimanis and his friend spent daylight hours walking the streets of Riga. But the Adventist sisters decided it would be safer for Kleimanis to stay at home after police caught his friend one day.<\/p>\n Kleimanis spent 42 months in the apartment reading the Bible, listening to the prayers of the sisters, and becoming acquainted with the Adventist faith, Pe\u0161elis said.<\/p>\n He also had several close calls. One time police officers pounded on the door.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you hiding any Jews?\u201d an officer asked when the sisters opened the door.<\/p>\n The women didn\u2019t want to lie, so one of them replied. \u201cCome see for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n The officers marched into the apartment, looked around, and marched out.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat they didn\u2019t realize was that Ysack was standing behind the front door,\u201d Pe\u0161elis said.<\/p>\n Another time Kleimanis had a terrible toothache and went to the dentist. As he sat in the dentist\u2019s chair, waiting for the dentist to arrive for treatment, several police officers barged into the room. They looked straight at him but left.<\/p>\n \u201cYsack later said that he didn\u2019t know what they saw,\u201d Pe\u0161elis said. \u201cHe knew that they had looked directly at him, but they went away.\u201d<\/p>\n Kleimanis lost all of his relatives in the war. He saw several of them killed, including a sister and her baby, shot with a single bullet. He found a new family in the Adventist Church, Pe\u0161elis said.<\/p>\n The authorities looked unkindly on his work and stripped him of his minister\u2019s license in 1962 after he helped open Adventist churches in Belarus and Russia. Unable to hold a regular job because of his Sabbath convictions, he joined a group of other Adventists in collecting resin from trees in the forest for the next six years.<\/p>\n The authorities returned his pastor\u2019s license in 1968, and he went on to lead churches in several Latvian cities until his retirement in 1984. He met British Queen Elizabeth II when she first visited Latvia in 2006.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had an opportunity to witness to her about his life and values,\u201d Pe\u0161elis said.<\/p>\n Kleimanis died in 2007 at the age of 83.<\/p>\n \u201cHe never served in church administration, but it is more important to be a child of God than to hold high office,\u201d Pe\u0161elis said. \u201cHe is remembered by a generation of Adventists as a pastor and trusted servant.\u201d https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Gr2o55acsUk<\/a><\/p>\n First Adventist Institution<\/strong><\/p>\n Last May, the church established its first institution in the country with the opening of a 40-bed nursing home in Zilaiskalns, a town located about two hours by car from Riga. The Zilaiskalns Nursing Home, which cost about $100,000 to open, is something like a retirement community with short- and long-term care and an option to stay for a short vacation. It has a waiting list of people \u2014 half of whom are church members \u2014 wanting to get in, said Madara Daukste, ADRA\u2019s country director for Latvia. ADRA runs the nursing home together with the Adventist Church.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Adventist nursing home offers something completely different from state-run nursing homes,\u201d Daukste said Friday. \u201cWe can offer medical help as well as spiritual help.\u201d<\/p>\n Adventist doctors provide medical treatment, while patients can attend evening fellowship services, prayer meetings on Friday nights, and church services on Saturdays, Daukste said. In addition, the nursing home offers activities that are important to Latvian culture, such as mushroom- and berry-picking outings that local residents can join.<\/p>\n The nursing home itself is a 12-year project that reflects the faithfulness of church members and God, Daukste said.<\/p>\n Zilaiskalns town leaders originally gave the property to church members some years ago to use in an outreach program in a community struggling with alcoholism and unemployment. But the church didn\u2019t have money to repair the rundown building. As the years passed, the local families grew stronger, and the program was no longer needed.<\/p>\n Around this time, a church member came across Isaiah 46:4, which says, \u201cEven to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you\u201d (NKJV).<\/p>\n \u201cHe was like, \u2018OK, let\u2019s build a nursing home,\u2019\u201d Daukste said.<\/p>\n The process was difficult, but church members \u201chave been assured and reassured that this was the right thing to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The church member who found the Isaiah passage once was thinking dejectedly about the project as he took a ship to Sweden to find extra work, Daukste said. While on board, his cell phone rang. The stranger on the other end said: \u201cMy husband and I really want to stay in your nursing home. We have saved some money, and we are going to give it to you. Its 400 euros. Put us on the list for a vacation visit. We may pass away before the nursing home opens, but we support your work.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese kinds of situations happened over and over again for 12 years,\u201d Daukste said. \u201cIt might have been a long miracle because it took 12 years. But now the nursing home is finished, and I think it\u2019s going to make an amazing difference.\u201d [ted<\/em>NEWS]<\/p>\n Editor’s note: Adventist Review news editor, Andrew McChesney, is currently traveling in Europe with Trans-European Division Communication director Victor Hulbert and reporting on Adventist work in the region. For a list of others stories, follow the links below. Stories first published in Adventist Review.<\/p>\n Polish Youth gear up for release of Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge film<\/a>1896 also was the year that Pauline Auni\u0146a was born. A longtime Adventist, she became the hope of Anna Terauds, another faithful Adventist, when Terauds decided to leave her former house to the Adventist Church, local church leaders said. Terauds had tucked away her ownership papers for the house after the Soviet authorities seized it.<\/p>\nWhen Latvia became independent, Auni\u0146a took the papers to pastor B\u0113rzi\u0146s over the objections of her own children and grandchildren, who were not church members and wanted to keep the property in the family, said B\u0113rzi\u0146s, now retired. He spoke in an interview in the building, where he now lives in an apartment on the upper floor.<\/p>\n<\/a>Among those attending the 120th-anniversary celebration was Lidija Kleimanis, whose late husband, Ysack Kleimanis, survived the Holocaust because of the faithfulness of two Adventist sisters.<\/p>\n<\/a>They found shelter with a former babysitter that first night, but she had no place to hide them and turned to her friends, Adventist sisters Eugenia and Katrin Apogas. The Apogas sisters also had little room in their one-room apartment, but they took in Kleimanis and his friend.<\/p>\nKleimanis was baptized in 1949, four years after the war ended. He married in 1953 and two years later became the pastor of Riga\u2019s Adventist Church No. 7, which met at a different location than today.<\/p>\n<\/a>Celebrating 120 years is not only about looking to the past but also toward the future, church leaders said.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u201cSo we thought, \u2018What should we do with the building?\u2019\u201d Daukste said.<\/p>\n
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