Precious in the sight of the LORD [is] the death of his saints.
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| Meropi Gjika |
Meropi Gjika, who under the
communist regime of Albania was forced to wait 50 years for baptism, died
February 17,201 at the age of 97.
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| Gjika waited 50 years to be baptized. |
Gjika accepted the Seventh-day
Adventist message of Christian hope in the 1940s after studying with Daniel
Lewis, an Albanian from the United States and Albania’s first Adventist
missionary. When Christian churches were banished from the country by the
post-World War II communist government, Gjika endured more than four decades of
religious repression. When Lewis was arrested, she looked after him by sending
food and clothing to his prison cell. Despite having no contact with a
larger Adventist community, she continued, for 46 years, to put aside tithe and
offerings from her small income.
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| The tithes and offerings Gjika saved during 46 years of communist rule in Albania. |
Ray Dabrowski, communication
director for the Adventist Church worldwide, was one of the first to visit
Albania after the fall of the communist government and the lifting of some
religious restrictions in the early 1990s, and he calls Gjika a “symbol of
faith, hope, love, and obedience.”
“When I met Meropi for the first
time in 1991 I was overwhelmed by the radiant faith and hope that she exuded,”
says Dabrowski. ” I could not believe that against all odds, in a country that
prohibited religion, she would continue to save her tithe money hoping that one
day she would give it to the Lord.”
Gjika told Dabrowski that she had
“three dreams. The first one was to be baptized. The second, to hand over
my tithe and offerings to the church. And now, I’m waiting to see a
church built here.” Gjika’s first two dreams were fulfilled, but,
although plans are being laid, she did not live to see the construction of an
Adventist Church building in Tirana.
http://www.ted-adventist.org/countries/europe/albania
