Tarzier
Memoirs |
Part III Two Decades
of Freedom
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THE SUNBEAMS
Our youth work, the Sunbeams, started from scratch in the decade of the
30’s. The program grew in response to a need my wife Olga perceived
in the community, shortly after I accepted the pastorate of the ailing
Golgotha Church. Olga noticed that a number of youngsters regularly loitered
in and around the church property. They seemed quite aimless. They played
with matches, tossed pebbles, or sat on the sidewalk. In other words,
they were ripe for trouble. Olga befriended them, and as she gained their
confidence she learned that several came from Baptist families, which
explained why they happened to hang out near the church. The parents had
ceased participating in church activities because of harsh treatment by
the church leaders. In fact, some families had been expelled from the
church by the “holier than thou” faction.
Olga wanted to help the youngsters and hopefully bring their families
back into the fold. As was her practice, she sought advice in prayer.
The children were not interested in Sunday school as such, and in any
case Olga felt they needed more than two hours on Sunday. By then I had
become involved in the project. The very first thing Olga and I did was
to organize a choir. Bible study followed, made attractive with quizzes
and prizes, then sewing classes for the girls while the boys formed a
choir. We eventually created a uniform, white shirts and gray pants for
the boys, white blouses and gray skirts for the girls. The boys’
choir became quite good. Ansis Schwalbe, the director of the choir, was
a very effective leader. Someone called him “general to the wind,”
because of his muddled thinking, but he nevertheless became quite an asset
to the Sunbeams.
In addition to the choir we also formed a small orchestra, at the initiative
of Arvids Purvs. A talented young fellow, he had already lined up four
or five young musicians, and one day he requested my permission to make
his instrumental group more official. I personally loaned them several
instruments, including a clarinet, cello, cornet, and violin, and the
“orchestra” was on its way. It eventually grew into a regular
group of about twenty. Their music was very popular with the congregation.
Our next move was to create a summer camp. It was customary in Latvia
to send boys to the country to work as shepherds during summer, to spare
them idleness and bad company in the city, and to bring in a little money
for the family. But one comment from the parents was that the months of
unsupervised summer work turned the children into little savages. In response
to this need, we established a Sunbeams summer camp. We found a suitable
spot some 70 km from Riga, in the central part of Vidzeme-Liveland, not
too far from the Ramuli railroad station. We ran it as a combination of
Bible study and work camp. The children worked four hours a day in the
fields, two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. The work consisted
of clearing pine tree stumps from a newly established small farm and splitting
the stumps for firewood. As a veteran of the independence war, the new
farmer had free use of the land, provided he use it for farming. To make
the work easier for the boys, the Agriculture Department loaned us stump
pulling equipment.
From these beginnings, learning as we went, we developed a complex organization.
We divided boys and girls into separate households, each with its own
leader. The household leaders in turn participated in the governing body
or council, with Olga as chairperson and three adults as her assistants.
They held monthly meetings when the heads of households brought in problems
or suggestions to meet the needs of the children. The youngsters eagerly
participated in decision-making, and every one had his or her area of
responsibility. Membership in the Sunbeams grew to almost one hundred
boys and girls between the ages of eleven and sixteen, approximately forty
boys and sixty girls.
Not everybody approved of the Sunbeam effort. Some church members thought
it was not proper to let “unsaved souls” hold programs in
the church. I remember one complainer, a tall woman with a voice like
a trombone. She did not like all the attention on the children. She was
a problem during services, too. I don’t think she knew how to say
“Amen.” We encouraged spontaneous prayer in our less formal
Sunday morning services, but she monopolized the floor and prayed on and
on, giving no chance for anyone else to pray. I managed the situation
as best I could, usually by breaking into a hymn: “Into my heart,
into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus.” The congregation
would soon join me and soon we’d all get up from our knees and declare
the prayer session over, whether or not she was finished. I regret, though,
that I made no effort to find out more about her. Who knows what her family
life was like.
Our work earned the attention of the president of Latvia, Karlis Ulmanis.
He promised a personal visit to us during his next trip to Vidzeme. We
also learned, through his representative, that he intended to buy all
the firewood we produced, to heat his personal residence in the coming
winter. As an incentive, he promised a new woolen suit and a pair of shoes
to every boy in the camp. The boys were delighted at the thought of new
clothes, not to mention the official attention. With the rapid expansion
of the Sunbeam movement, which now numbered almost one hundred youth,
we even spawned imitators. Other churches began to provide for their youth,
and even tried to compete with the Sunbeams. As for us, we began to dream
big dreams. We wanted to buy a run-down house next to the church, to be
used as a sports building. Our humble efforts were beginning to pay off
handsomely.
However, our experiment was soon to end. On Sunday, October 5, 1939, Stalin
sent his henchman Molotov to deliver an ultimatum to the Baltic countries.
We were to “request protection” by the Soviet Union and to
welcome the arrival of Communist tanks. President Ulmanis returned to
Riga in a hurry and never got around to visiting the Sunbeam camp. On
that Sunday we met for a service in the local town hall. The hall was
packed to hear the boys’ choir, as well as two visiting ministers,
but the occasion was bittersweet. Everybody knew that evil days were upon
us. Olga and I and the visiting pastors took the evening train back to
the capital. The first orders from the occupying forces disbanded all
youth organizations and prohibited any work with youth. The Sunbeam camp
was padlocked and the children returned to their parents. Thus ended our
ten years of love and work.
Latgale
Characters
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