![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/sitenews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/images_news-2_Adventist-Latvia-radio-Liene-Meiere.jpeg\" "\\"Liene")
<\/a>Voice of Hope is built and sustained by prayer, Liene Meiere says.<\/strong><\/p>\n Meiere refers to the Voice of Hope online radio station as her church \u2014 and it is similar in many ways, with 100 people from Latvia and other countries listening daily to its looping four hours of music, church services, Sabbath School classes, and audio books by Adventist Church cofounder Ellen G. White.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a radio church,\u201d Meiere said in an interview in a studio at the Latvian State Radio building in central Riga, where her ceribasbalss.com<\/a> radio station records programs at no cost. \u201cWe want to lead people to Christ. This is my heart\u2019s desire.\u201d<\/p>\n The studio, unexpectedly provided by a Latvian State Radio journalist who is also a church member, and other miracles allowed the radio station to be established in just six months, Meiere said. The radio has operated for four years with nearly no expenses.<\/p>\n Church members have set up online radio stations before. Paulo Kretli, an IT manager for the Adventist Church in Brazil, has run R\u00e1dio Advai from a server in his home for the past decade. But few have dared to start a radio station with no experience or money.<\/p>\n Meiere, who teaches English at two public high schools,didn\u2019t want to take that risk when she began to pray in 2012. She wanted the Adventist message to receive more airtime than the 15- to 30-minute slots that the church paid for on Latvian Christian Radio, a Baptist-run station. She soon felt impressed that God wanted her to start an Adventist radio station.<\/p>\n \u201cLord, I am the wrong person,\u201d she prayed. \u201cThis is not for me.\u201d<\/p>\n She sensed that God replied: \u201cWhat is the problem? What are you afraid of?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI am afraid of starting and not being able to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo worries. You will follow One who has never failed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, no, Lord. Thank you very much. It\u2019s not for me.\u201d<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8YXLPc3QhH0<\/a><\/p>\n Struggle With God<\/strong><\/p>\n The conversation repeated itself during her prayer times for weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Lord said, \u2018What is the problem. What are you afraid of?\u2019\u201d Meiere said, recounting her struggle.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018I am afraid because I don\u2019t know people. I need a team, a real team, because the radio is a big elephant and you need to feed it every day. Maybe five times a day. And I don\u2019t know people. I don\u2019t live in Riga. I live 200 kilometers from Riga.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the Lord said: \u2018Yes, it\u2019s true that you don\u2019t know people. But it is enough that I know people.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI said: \u2018No. Thank you very much, but no. You need to find some other person.\u2019<\/p>\n Then came a week that Meiere could not read the Bible or pray. It was too difficult. She said it was a painful time. She did not tell her husband. It was between her and God.<\/p>\n After seven days, she went to the bookshelf to try to find something new to read. She pulled out Selected Messages, Book 2, and read on page 168: \u201cYou must needs put away your questioning doubts, and have full faith in the reality of your divine mission, to be indeed successful in labor. The joy, the success, the glory of your ministry, is to be ever ready with listening ear to answer the call of the Master, \u2018Here am I; send me\u2019 (Isaiah 6:8<\/a>). Here, Lord, with my heart’s best and holiest affections; here, take my mind with its purest and noblest thoughts, take me, and qualify me for Thy service.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI started to cry,\u201d Meiere said. \u201cI closed the book and went to my husband to share this crazy idea that a country woman wanted to start a radio station in Latvia.\u201d<\/p>\n Meiere traveled to Riga, where she received the support of the church leaders. Suddenly people began to approach her with offers of support, she said. The first was Guntra Rusko, a journalist from Latvian State Radio who had tried to create an Adventist radio station two decades earlier. Rusko provided the studio and assists the radio station by taking interviews and preparing audio files for broadcast.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very easy for me,\u201d Rusko said, sitting beside Meiere during the interview. \u201cIt\u2019s no problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Meiere also conducts interviews at the studio and at an Adventist Church-owned television studio.<\/p>\n Free Ticket to Norway<\/strong><\/p>\n The first Sabbath in Norway, she met a radio station manager at church who told her which microphones and other equipment she needed. Also at church, she also met a sound engineer and web administrator who offered to help.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did not pay any money,\u201d Meiere said. \u201cGod provided.\u201d<\/p>\n She also invested all the money from picking strawberries into the project.<\/p>\n Meiere knows of at least one person who has been baptized through the radio station\u2019s work. But she is convinced that it is changing many hearts. She told of a woman who called the phone number on the radio station\u2019s website to say she had stumbled across the broadcast several hours earlier as she prepared to kill herself. The woman had listened to a Bible story, followed by music, and then another Bible story, and more music.<\/p>\n \u201cShe wanted to talk with someone responsible for the radio,\u201d Meiere said. \u201cShe told me her life story. We prayed a lot. Now we are good friends. She said our radio saved her life.\u201d<\/p>\n The radio station\u2019s main goal is to reach Latvian citizens living abroad. Meiere, who lived for a while in Britain, said it\u2019s easy to lose contact with the church and drift away from God when away from home.<\/p>\n \u201cBut when you find the online radio, you can listen,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The radio station, which has four core staff members and about 50 other volunteers, has received e-mails and phone calls of gratitude from Latvians living in Britain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, and the United States.<\/p>\n Pastors from Baptist and Pentecostal churches also listen regularly.<\/p>\n \u201cThey call and ask for more information,\u201d Meiere said.<\/p>\n Meiere is now praying to expand the radio station\u2019s original programming. But she needs more volunteers. She said her daily prayer is: \u201cYou told me you know people, and You never fail.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI repeat these words to God,\u201d she said. \u201cHe is really faithful to me with His promises.\u201d [tedNEWS]<\/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 Still active at 120 \u2013 Latvia celebrates<\/a><\/a>Shortly after meeting Rusko,Meiere received a free ticket to Norway from church members who wanted her to act as their interpreter as they picked strawberries. Latvians often travel to Norway in the summer to earn extra money picking strawberries. Meiere didn\u2019t want to go, preferring to stay in Latvia to start the radio station, But she couldn\u2019t find anyone to take her ticket and ultimately decided to go.<\/p>\n
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