We arrived in Bălţi in 1988, where Maria had lived before being exiled 37 years earlier. By 1988, there were about 375 Witnesses in this second-largest city of Moldova; now there are well over 1,500!

By the time our organization was legalized in the Soviet Union in March 1991, thousands of people had become disillusioned by the failure of Communism. Many were bewildered and lacked real hope for the future. So when Moldova became an independent sovereign republic, what a fertile territory our neighbors​—and even some of our former persecutors—​proved to be! After our exile in 1951, only a relatively few Witnesses were left in Moldova, but now there are well over 18,000 in this small country of about 4,200,000.