• Latvia
    2007 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

    • “OH, IT’S A DICTIONARY”

      In 1981, 18-year-old Yurii Kaptola was imprisoned for three years for maintaining Christian neutrality. Says Yurii: “I spent two years of my sentence in Siberia, where we lived in tents and worked in the forests, even when the temperature fell to minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit [-30°C]!a Jehovah always took care of me spiritually. For instance, on one occasion, Mother sent me a copy of the Greek Scriptures in a food parcel. While a guard was examining the parcel, he spotted the book.

      “‘What’s this?’ he asked.

      “Before I could answer, a nearby inspector said, ‘Oh, it’s a dictionary,’ and let me keep it.

      “I was released in 1984. Instead of settling in Ukraine, my home country, I moved to Riga, where I associated with a small group of Witnesses for about two years. However, because Latvia was still part of the Soviet Union, I was again called up to serve in the army. The result? On August 26, 1986, I was again sentenced to hard labor, this time four years in Latvia. After serving time in Riga, I went to a camp near the city of Valmiera. At a hearing for my release early in 1990, the judge said: ‘Yurii, the decision to imprison you four years ago was illegal. They should not have convicted you.’ All of a sudden, I was free!”

      In 1991, Yurii became a member of the only congregation in Latvia and served as one of the two elders there. “The field was really white for harvesting,” he writes.

      When Yurii first arrived in Latvia, he spoke to a woman who was tidying up a grave. He recalls: “When I asked her why life seems so short, she took a few steps toward me, and we talked. Minutes later, a large branch broke off a tree and crashed to the ground right where she had been working. Had she stayed there, she would have been crushed. She gave me her address, and I arranged for a sister to visit her. In 1987 the woman, her son, and her daughter-in-law were baptized.”