Five years and four months after it demolished a Seventh-day Adventist church building, the government of Turkmenistan has allowed the local congregation to hold a weekly worship service on Saturday (Sabbath). Church sources report that between 75 and 80 attended the event, including local city officials from Ashkhabad.

"We were allowed to rent a [meeting] place and [it] will be available till the end of this year," Pavel Fedotov, who is also president of the Adventist Church in Turkmenistan, said in a message to church leaders.

"We also had official guests from the city administration, and they congratulated our church [on its] first meeting in this hall," Fedotov said.

Member reaction was encouraging, he added: "Everybody liked this place, because we are so homesick for such meetings and it was a big holiday for all of us."

The resumption of weekly, public worship for the Adventist Church in Turkmenistan may represent another milestone in religious freedom there. What is taken for granted in many parts of the world -- the right to peaceably assemble for worship and ownership of a church building -- has been a subject of great difficulty in the former Soviet state, now a republic, which is located in Central Asia, bordering the Caspian Sea, between Iran and Kazakhstan.

In November of 1999, a bulldozer began the demolition of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Ashkhabad. Last year, however, things began to change. In June, the Adventist Church received registration number 0001, the first Protestant congregation to be registered by the country's Ministry of Justice, church leaders said. Now, weekly worship appears to have returned.

"We continue to pray that each person living in the 12 countries of our ... territory will have the opportunity to know about God's love, and to make their decision according to their conscience," said Pastor Billy Biaggi, treasurer for the Adventist Church in the Euro-Asia region. "We extend thanks for the efforts of the Adventist world church's Department of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty and the International Religious Liberty Association, a non-governmental organization, [which helps] us with this issue of human rights through all the countries of the world."

Added John Graz, Public Affairs and Religious Liberty director for the Adventist world church, "This is an historic move which confirms the registration of the church last year. It comes after a long series of interventions from our office and good cooperation within the church in Euro Asia and with international organizations." .... [Editor: Mark A. Kellner for ANN/APD]