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A little over two years ago we were invited to help start a new church in Riga. A Latvian pastor, Almers Ludviks, was asked to become the pastor and I was asked, along with a couple of other people, to help form a team to get the church started.

Vilandes Baptist Church was a church that existed back before communist times. When the communists took over they took the building away. This is something that went on quite a lot during that time. It seems that the communists wanted to use the Seventh Day Adventists church building for some other purpose. So they took it away. In order to have a place for the Adventists, they took away the Baptist church and gave it to them. The reasoning was that there were already two other Baptist churches that were being allowed to stay open, and the members of Vilandes could go to one of them.

With the end of communism, the old buildings were given back to their respective original owners. Consequently, the Baptist Union was able to get the Vilandes building back. However, there was no congregation to attend there. So, the Union decided that rather than giving up the building, they would start a new church in the old building.

The building itself is quite a nice looking structure, but is in need of massive repairs. After nearly fifty years of neglect you can quite imagine. Some work has already been done. New electrical wiring has been put in and some physical alterations have been done to the appearance of the front of the sanctuary. The installation of new roofing has been begun, but had to be suspended because of the onset of winter. There was a serious problem with leaking. Remaining are some structural reinforcements, renovation of the rest rooms, covering up the places where the new wiring was installed and a good paint job throughout the whole building, as well as numersous other smaller jobs. The primary holdups now are financial.

We held our first regular service on the first Sunday of 1995 and were constituted as a church in April of the same year. The church currently has approximately eighty members. While there is still a problem getting enough leadership, the church has managed to begin a Bible study program for all ages, a youth meeting, mid-week prayer service and recently a choir and women's organization. We also recently began a deacon family ministry program.