Sidewalk Trader Tells of Miracles While Abiding in Christ in Kazakhstan

Seeking God’s will leads Valentina Shlee to the Adventist Church and a woman considering suicide.

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

Valentina Shlee, a 53-year-old sidewalk trader of homemade preserves in northern Kazakhstan, said the most astounding experiences in her life have unfolded as she sought God’s will with all her heart.

It all began when Shlee realized that her childhood church did not observe all 10 commandments and she prayed for weeks to God to reveal to her a church that did. Later, by obeying what she described as God’s voice, she unexpectedly met a woman struggling with suicidal thoughts and was able to introduce her to Jesus.

“When you have an abiding relationship with God, He can tell you where to go and whom to talk with,” Shlee said in an interview at the Southern Seventh-day Adventist Church in Pavlodar, a city of 300,000 people in the predominantly Muslim country of Kazakhstan in Central Asia. “You can hear His voice and know His will.”

Shlee, who was raised in a Sunday-keeping church, began to seek God’s will in the early 1990s when her elder sister, Galina, announced that their church was not keeping all of the commandments of Exodus 20. Shlee opened the Bible and read, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” in the fourth commandment. She and her sister decided that they needed to find a church that observed the seventh-day Sabbath, but they didn’t know where to look.

“I said to my sister: ‘Let’s do it like this. If the Bible is really the true Word of God, there must be a church that follows all Ten Commandments. So let’s pray about it,” Shlee said.

The sisters prayed for three months: “If there is such a church, please take us to that church.”

Holiday Surprise

On March 8, a national holiday, Shlee suddenly had an overwhelming desire to visit a relative named Nelly. Shlee said she didn’t know what came over her. She had a 2-year-old son at the time and rarely ventured outside her home. But she felt compelled to visit Nelly.

So Shlee made the unplanned visit. But that wasn’t the biggest surprise of the day. As Shlee and Nelly were talking, they were stunned to see another relative, Olga, walk past the window and ring the doorbell.

“Nelly and I were surprised to see Olga arrive. We weren’t expecting her,” Shlee said. “But now I see that God organized that meeting.”

Olga was not a close friend. Shlee actually felt wary about her because she had heard that Olga had joined a sect called the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Believers from the Russian Orthodox Church, the main Christian faith in Kazakhstan and other former Soviet republics, often refer to Adventists and other Protestants disparagingly as sectarians.

Once in the house, Olga looked at Shlee and asked directly, “What do you think of God?”

Shlee did not answer the question. Instead she asked, “Do you keep all the commandments? Do you keep the Sabbath?”

Several hours later Shlee contacted her elder sister, Galina, to report that she had learned the Seventh-day Adventist Church observed all Ten Commandments. Galina, a school teacher, carried her own fact check into the church, and the sisters were baptized together.

“God through the Holy Word opened up the true church to us,” Shlee said.

An Unexplainable Voice 

Years passed. Nelly immigrated to Germany, joining an exodus of people leaving Kazakhstan in search of a better life. Shlee stayed in Pavlodar, raising three children and helping her husband make ends meet by selling homemade jams, pickles, and other preserves from a table on a city sidewalk. She also became an active church member and, in recent months, worked as a massage therapist at a community health center operated in the Southern Seventh-day Adventist Church.

One day, Shlee received a postal package from Nelly in Germany. Nelly wanted her to give several enclosed videotapes to a friend named Olga.

But Shlee couldn’t seem to find the time to make the trip across town. A month passed.

One afternoon as Shlee sat on the couch at home, she was startled to hear a voice address her.

“Stand up, pick up the videotapes, and go to Olga,” the voice said.

Shlee said she couldn’t explain what she heard. The voice wasn’t audible. It spoke from within her.

“For me, it was like the voice of God,” she said.

Not sure what was happening, she quickly got dressed and headed to Olga’s apartment building. Upon her arrival, she noticed a female stranger behind her. The unknown woman accompanied her up the stairs, and Olga welcomed them both into her apartment.

Olga introduced the two women.

“Rosa,” she said to the stranger, “you need to talk with Valentina.”

Through tears, Rosa spoke with despair about how she had been considering suicide because of family difficulties. She said she had been looking for God and reading the Bible.

Olga expressed relief that the two women had showed up at the same time. Olga was planning to immigrate to Canada soon and had been worried about what would happen to Rosa.

Shlee invited Rosa to attend Bible studies with her. Several months later, Rosa was baptized.

Shlee said these and other experiences have underscored to her the importance of abiding in Christ as described in John 15:7-8, where Jesus said: “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples” (NKJV).

“If we are really connected to God, then we can obey Him, bring disciples to Him, and bear good fruit,” Shlee said.

A portion of the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering for fourth quarter 2017 will help fund the opening of the first Seventh-day Adventist preschool in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan.