Adventist Spring Festival in Paide, Estonia
Paide, ESTONIA. A small and friendly town named Paide was the place where about 600 people, mostly Adventists, came together on April 22nd and 23rd to celebrate their first Spring Festival. This number represents about one-third of the whole Adventist community in Estonia, which makes it a grand event for the Adventist Church in that area.
The idea of the occasion was to encourage our church members to be more active in their spiritual life. The slogan that represented the whole event was “God STILL Saves”, meaning that we have so much to be thankful off, that we are being saved by God not only in the future, when He comes, but our lives are being changed and thus saved already today. This is an important message we all need to understand, that God makes our lives better than it is possible in the tempting secular world today. If we want to be successful to portray Jesus, we need to believe in it.
Aimo Helminen, a guest speaker and pastor from Finland, made this point very clear, saying that we need to be connected to God in order to “follow the map to heaven” and to be lost.
The Festival was filled with music and different activities for both young and old. Children up to 12 and even older polled plasticize and made an exhibition about Jesus who saves. In the big auditorium there was a round-table talk about our history during the 40-s. Also the 58th General Conference was introduced.
The peak of the day was the 7 o’clock evening concert. There was a big choir consisting of singers from all the churches in Estonia, an orchestra and professional singers, and a married couple from Russia.
A new book was also translated and published for the time of the Festival. Jim Hohnberger’s “Escape to God” was received very well. It was translated and edited by volunteers and the funds to publish the book where received through donations.
We hope that the book will reach not only our Adventist families, but will be a valuable material for other Christians and non-Christians as well.
Adventist Spring Festival was a success and hopefully inspired us all to be more active in the future. Several great ideas have been born through this Festival and I pray they will come into reality. Many of the participants of the Spring Festival stated their conviction that this festival should form a new tradition in our Estonian Adventist community.
Andres Ploompuu,
Estonian Conference Communication Director