After a decade of work and financial sacrifice, Seventh-day Adventists in the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan now have a spiritual center of their own in the capital city of Tashkent.

“I think of all the prayers that have been uttered over the years about this new house of prayer,” said regional Adventist president Rubin Ott at a dedication service in late June. “Finally this miracle has happened. The Lord is holding up Uzbekistan and Tashkent.”

Ott says that religious groups in Uzbekistan are allowed to hold public meetings only in their own buildings. “We can’t rent a hall or theater as they do in places like Russia,” he explains. Complicated registration laws restrict the work of all religious bodies in Uzbekistan, including that of the majority Muslims.

The new Adventist center, which was sponsored in part by church members in Germany and other countries, includes a large church auditorium, rooms for small group meetings, and a field office for local church leaders. The Adventist administrative office for Uzbekistan and several nearby nations is located in the country of Kyrgyzstan. Adventists must obtain local registration in eight of Uzbekistan’s political regions before they will be legally permitted to open a separate headquarters in Uzbekistan. The church has currently completed this registration process in six regions.

Guests at the weekend dedication program included Begzot Kadyrov, a representative from the Uzbekistan Ministry of Religious Affairs. Artur Stele, president of the Adventist Church in Euro-Asia, thanked Kadyrov for his support of religious freedom. “The government of Uzbekistan has been gracious to us,” Stele said.

Despite challenges to their freedom, members in Uzbekistan point out that their situation is better than in neighboring Turkmenistan, where Adventists and other minority groups are essentially forbidden to meet.

Adventists in Uzbekistan say they faced discouragement as their membership declined in the late 1990s. When the Soviet Union broke up, thousands of Uzbekistan residents with Russian and German ancestry returned to their homelands. Local Adventist churches lost many second- and third-generation members.

“We met and prayed about how our church could grow again,” says Ott. “Our countries [in Central Asia] have so many laws about what you can do and can’t do as a church. But we decided to start focusing not on what we couldn’t do but on what we could do.”

“For example, in Uzbekistan, we can legally invite the public to our own buildings. We can do health education programs such as Health Expo and stop smoking seminars. We can meet in small Bible study groups as long as we do it in one of our churches. We tried to focus on what is possible, and for the past two years we have once again experienced small increases in membership.”

With about 25 million inhabitants, Uzbekistan is the most populous and some say the most historic of the former Soviet nations in Central Asia. Samarkand and other cities served as major stops on the ancient Silk Road between China and Europe. The first Adventists probably arrived in the country before 1905.