Suomi Finland:

A Beacon in the Baltic

By Giles H. Florence, Jr.

Associate Editor

It is said, “When God finished creating the earth, all the leftover tree seeds were dropped right here in Suomi.” Suomi—Finland in English—means marshy land. From arctic Lapland south to the Baltic Sea, Finland’s landscape bristles with a thick coat of pine, spruce, and birch. So dense is the foliage that when seen from the air, the land resembles a gigantic green moss rising from the sea.

If a landscape can reveal its people, it does in Finland, for the Finns are a people of stamina—a stamina that also manifests itself in the land. Beneath the trees lies only a thin layer of dark loamy soil, then granite. Everywhere, just beneath the ground is solid rock, and the trees that send roots down into rock fissures show the same energetic determination and enduring faith the Finns have.

The Finns have a word that describes their national character: sisu (pronounced see’-soo). It means “don’t give in; stick to it.”

This stamina, resoluteness, and boldness—even obstinacy—is perhaps the single quality that may explain why Finland never became an eastern-bloc country. Many times in the past two hundred years, Finns held back the larger Russian armies. And though they lost their beloved forests of East Karelia to the Soviets in 1940, reducing their land by a tenth, they preserved their independence and remained a beacon of freedom.

Once a Finn becomes converted to the gospel, sisu and faith combine to make deeply committed members, and though the Church has not grown as fast here as in other areas of the world, the bonds a new member makes when baptized and fellowshipped are not easily broken.

One couple who exemplify this distinct combination of faith with Finnish resolve are Matti and Kirsti Salmi. They live in the west coast city of Kemi, at the northern tip of the Gulf of Bothnia, less than one hundred kilometers below the Arctic Circle. In 1988, the Salmis became the first Finnish married couple called to serve a mission in their own land. “I had been hoping we might serve as missionaries in the temple,” recalls Kirsti, “since it was on a temple trip that we met in 1981.”

Kirsti had joined the Church in 1973 in Kuopio, when the missionaries taught her a gospel that “sounded familiar and true, especially after reading the Book of Mormon.” For Matti, it was in 1978, when he was forty-eight, that the elders brought what he remembers as “an undeniably strong spirit with them,” and he too was baptized. The two met in Switzerland in the summer of 1981 at the Swiss Temple.

“But how glad we are to have received a proselyting mission call,” says Matti. “Within the first week of our mission, we met and taught our first people to be converted. By the end of the month they were baptized; then came another and another.”

Matti and Kirsti were especially successful working with older couples, despite what some might call disappointments. “Even when people weren’t baptized,” adds Kirsti, “we never felt we taught in vain. On the other side, when some things are clearer, many of those will accept.”

Their work involving members in missionary work brought three young converts in Savonlinna, deep in the lake district. Savonlinna is the beautiful site of the nation’s annual opera festivals. Its setting is dramatic, on a large archipelago in the middle of the largest of Finland’s 180,000 lakes. Lake Saimaa meanders over some 1,700 square miles. “We so enjoyed our work in that lovely setting,” says Brother Salmi. “The members there are devoted to the gospel and freely helped us share it.”

According to the Salmis, “teaching eternal principles together, and sharing love for others, deepened and strengthened our marriage more than anything I could think of.”

Love to Share

A second distinguishing characteristic of Finland is its language. Most Finns speak Finnish; however, they share much with Sweden. In fact, a sizable Swedish-speaking minority inhabits the south and west coastal cities. Road signs and official printed materials are usually bilingual, using first the Finnish and second the Swedish words. Thus, the country’s official name, which is Suomen Tasavalta, is most frequently written Suomi Finland.

“Our national tendency to share and interact makes Finland a good place for spreading the gospel,” says President Pekka Roto of the Tampere Finland Stake. “There are, however, several reasons this isn’t happening as rapidly as we would like. For one, the state religion has been so long established that even though few people attend, its members have sisu. Consequently, they are not usually interested in talk of another church.

“But in my mind, our biggest single obstacle to spreading the gospel in Finland is, ironically enough, our country’s high standard of living. Like many nationalities in the world, Finns are hard-working people who leave too little room in their lives for spiritual things.” He explains that the government provides citizens with so much that Finns are not inclined to sacrifice. He points out that the Prophet Joseph Smith taught that sacrifice was an essential element of religion.

President Seppo Forsman of the Helsinki Finland Stake agrees, saying, “Our priesthood leaders are well prepared for their work and do it joyfully. We just need more time in the day.” When the stake was formed in 1976, he recalls two years of faster growth, which then slowed again until 1988. With increased growth now, recent efforts to fellowship new converts have raised the retention level to 75 percent.

In 1990, with 120 missionaries serving in Finland, 125 people joined the Church, bringing Finnish membership to just over 4,200. There are two stakes—both in the south, in the largest population centers—eleven wards, nineteen branches, and three districts.

A seldom-mentioned but nationwide challenge to missionary work has been the declining population. This national population trend derives from a combination of Finland’s low birth rate and the fact that during the 1970s approximately four times as many people left Finland as came to it.

Most Finns who receive mission calls serve outside their country. Last year, for example, only five served missions in Finland. The number of full-time missionaries currently serving from the Tampere stake represents just over 50 percent of those eligible. The youth of both stakes are strong and well prepared for missions. Among the young men and young women, 70 percent are active, and 80 percent of those attend seminary.

Latter-day Saint youth in Finland, like LDS youth elsewhere, enjoy great blessings. They have parents who are education-minded and who expect a lot of them. Furthermore, living gospel standards gives them a purpose outside their own desires. “These kinds of advantages help our youth want to achieve beyond the average, and enable them to care for and be kind to others,” says President Roto’s wife, Anna Kaarina. Their children, Matti, Liisa, and Kaisa, have all been leaders in their school and are outstanding students. Liisa, age twenty-one, is currently serving in the Utah Ogden Mission. Matti, age eighteen, who is studying in France, is concerned enough about the conservation of the Finnish environment that he made a presentation to the Parliament.

The sharing of other cultures begins at an early age among Finnish Latter-day Saints. It is not uncommon for young people in the Church to spend a year or a summer on an international exchange, as did Visa and Pasi Vorimo, of the Espoo Ward, in the Helsinki stake. They both became exchange students to the United States during high school, and then both served foreign missions. “It is an important part of a person’s education to be comfortable with all kinds of people,” says their father, Pertti, a businessman and accountant. He and his wife, Kirsti, have opened their home to international visitors on many occasions, and they’ve also lived in Germany, where Pertti worked when the children were young.

“What people say about the feeling in our congregations being the same anywhere in the world is true,” adds Pertti. “But I think what I prefer to notice is the variety, the distinctions among our people. The Lord created the earth in all its variety for a purpose. We can respect each other for our differences and not be too eager for a superficial unity. The gospel teaches unity through variety.”

Unity through Variety

One way to observe how Church members in Finland are coming to a unity of the faith is to look at individuals in their variety as they serve, learn, and sacrifice together in building the kingdom.

For Hannu Sorsa, of the Helsinki Third Ward, going on a full-time mission was a sacrifice for one reason. He recalls the feeling: “I love music so much—performing it, practicing it, composing and arranging it—that it was a sacrifice for me to leave daily devotion to music to go out and spread the gospel for two years. But I have been blessed for going.”

At twenty-eight, Hannu, now a returned missionary, is completing his music education at Sibelius Academy, Finland’s finest music college, named for its best-known composer, Jean Sibelius. Hannu plays piano, saxophone, clarinet, and various percussion instruments. “Hannu is nearly always leading, directing, or accompanying some musical production for the stake,” says Leena Multamäki, who sings in many of the productions herself. Hannu serves as stake music leader in Helsinki and plans a career in teaching, performing, and composing.

Leena comes from Savonlinna, where her father is president of the Kuopio district, and she works in the Church translation office in Helsinki. “Each member’s good works here represent tiny rays of light,” Leena says. “We’re small in number but noticeable.”

Other examples of sacrificing and putting the right things first include the Friströms of the Helsinki First Ward. The high cost of living in Finland is hard enough for a couple in a land where the national average is 1.8 children per family and most mothers work. For a family of eleven, like Tapani and Sinikka Friström’s, the challenge is manifold.

“Long before we were baptized, we both sensed the importance of family,” says Tapani. “But once the gospel began to direct our lives, we came to understand why.” When they married, in 1967, doctors told Sinikka she would not be able to have children. Tapani assured her not only that she would give birth, but he told her when. Both had been sensitive to the Spirit, even before their baptisms.

The Friström family has struggled to do what they thought was right for them. To a couple with less sisu, the obvious choice would be for Sinikka to accept one of the many lucrative offers she has received to do research for the country’s leading pharmaceutical company or begin a teaching career at the University of Helsinki, where she had distinguished herself as a student. Instead, Sinikka decided to center her life around her family. She serves as ward organist and Primary pianist, and Tapani serves on the stake high council.

More Rays of Light

Large families in Finland are not exactly scorned, but they do attract attention and frequent questions. The most common question asked of Jarkko Metsätähti and his wife, Virpi, is “How can you afford so many children when you are not rich?” Virpi and Jarkko, who each grew up as only children, agree they are tempted to respond that they are rich because they have seven children, not in spite of them.

The Metsätähtis live in Turku, on the southwest coast, the capital of Finland until 1812. The home they built is surrounded by more than a dozen large old apple trees. Jarkko has his own business, producing educational computer software that is sold worldwide. “Our family is our life,” he says. “Whether our family is considered large or not, Virpi and I have no other interests that are as important as our children.”

The Metsätähti family includes four boys and three girls, all of them musical and artistic. Their daughter, Säde, age sixteen, is typical of their children: she sings solos in her school chorus, sews her own clothes, and studies English.

For her part, Virpi, a homemaker with a college degree in science, loves to study. She also enjoys organizing stake concert series and has translated many Latter-day Saint hymns into Finnish.

Jarkko has been branch president and has served in the stake presidency, but he feels that after thirty years of serving in the Church, he has found “new dimensions in one of the most important callings I’ve ever had—as Scoutmaster here in Turku.” His troop has more than fifty members. His Scouts found great fulfillment recently when they conducted a charity drive for needy people in Romania.

Even when Finnish families in the Church are not large, they attract attention. Eleven-year-old Juha Linnanen’s schoolteacher told his parents how she admired the way the Linnanens spend time with their children. “That was a wonderful compliment,” says Sister Seija Linnanen, a stake Relief Society leader in the Helsinki stake and mother of four children, ages four to twenty-one.

Her husband, Vesa, who has a kitchen furnishing business, adds, “Yes, after twenty-five years of marriage and fourteen years in the Church, I feel I’ve gained so much from the gospel that has helped me. I used to think that children would just grow to become what they would be. But gospel principles have helped me realize my responsibility for steering and guiding my children in learning the truth. Seija and I have tried our best to raise our children in all the wisdom of the Lord as we continue to learn ourselves.”

For single Church members in Finland, the gospel adds an increased capacity to love, according to Mirja Suonpää, Helsinki stake Single Adult leader. “I love the Church. The people, the activities, the teachings have come to fill my life. I am so much happier since I joined; it has made a complete change in the way I see things.

“People noticed changes in me,” she says, amid the potted plants and cut floral arrangements that brighten her home. “New things have become important to me, and things don’t bother me that used to.” She is a psychiatric nurse and has come to prefer her involvement with Church activities and events to being involved in the union that formerly took up much of her time.

“I love to dance, love to travel,” she continues, “and friends in the Church are great for enjoying these with. We took a ski trip to Lapland together and a trip last spring to Leningrad.

“In my profession, the gospel has given me insights into the needs of Heavenly Father’s children, enabling me to be an even greater comfort, with more patience and strength than I had without it. With my relatives, I have also become more of a contributor.”

Warmth of Their Light

It would be difficult to find better examples of the warmth and generosity of the Scandinavian spirit than the Church members from all over Finland who have given of themselves to their Russian neighbors across the frigid Gulf of Finland and eastward in old Karelia. Since political barriers to religion have been removed, many Finns have been sharing the gospel in the USSR.

Couples like the Jäkkös of Lappeenranta, the Laitinens of Oulu, the Lammintauses of Jyväskylä, the Kirsis of Lahti, and the Kemppainens of Helsinki have gone Sunday after Sunday since 1989 to visit and work with Latter-day Saints in the Soviet Union. At first, they shared their testimonies and their love of the Savior. Then, as congregations grew, these faithful Finns worked and organized and trained to prepare new members in Vyborg, Leningrad, and Tallinn so they could worship and perform ordinances of the priesthood themselves.

“Since the day Kari Haikkola was called to preside over the first Finnish stake in 1977,” says Jussi Kemppainen, president of the Baltic District, “we’ve seen the coming of this day. Carrying the gospel to our brothers and sisters in the Soviet Union is a blessing that has come from the Lord after years of the people’s prayer and patient faith.”

Throughout Finland, roads and highways are literally swaths cut through thick timber, with trees often completely obscuring buildings or lakes even a few yards off the road. Down one such stretch of road on the southeast edge of Finland is the home of Aimo and Petronella Jäkkö, one of the families who have shared the gospel in the USSR. Aimo is a loommaker, and their rural house is attached to a large building that used to be a school, where he now builds looms.

They recently helped convert Irene Maximova, a friend from Leningrad. A 35-year-old navigational engineering student and a mother, Irene is grateful to know about God. “All my life, I had been taught there’s no God, so it was difficult for me to discover this,” she said. “I’ve wanted to believe he was there, but I had so little support and so little evidence. A new strength has come into my life knowing he’s there.”

Her husband, Sergei, a table tennis coach, is still looking into the Church. They have a three-year-old son, Dimitri. “So many Russian lives have been changed because of people like Nellie and Aimo,” added Irene. “I am eager to return to Leningrad and begin sharing my testimony of the gospel with people I know. Russian people are looking for the truth. The Church is growing fast there and is bringing much-needed hope to the Soviet people during a difficult adjustment to new freedoms.”

Walking in Footsteps

When Steven and Donna Mecham, of Ogden, Utah, were set apart prior to presiding over the Finland Helsinki Mission in 1987, they were told that monumental things would happen as they served there.

“Having served a mission in Finland years before,” says Brother Mecham, “I knew that the Finns had long believed they would take the gospel to the Soviet Union. Donna and I were informed of the progress Elder Russell M. Nelson and Elder Hans B. Ringger were making with the Soviet government concerning the Church, and we were hopeful and grateful to participate in whatever way we could.”

President Kemppainen adds, “From the beginning of the work in the USSR, we have felt we were walking in footsteps that had been prepared for us. So many things have just happened to help the work, things that could not be coincidental. These people have been prepared by the hand of the Lord.”

Since the first Finnish missionary efforts began in the USSR, branches have grown in Vyborg and Tallinn, and now two branches are in the larger city of Leningrad. Finnish members continue to help, but with the establishment of the Finland Helsinki East Mission in July 1990, more than twenty full-time missionaries have been serving in the northwestern Soviet Union, along with some missionaries from the Austria Vienna East Mission who are serving in southwestern areas of the USSR.

The faith and sisu of Finnish Latter-day Saints has enabled them to serve steadfastly and patiently in their own land, and now their light shines beyond their borders.

Finland’s beacon in the Baltic, then, is more than a light of freedom in a troubled political sea. More than sharing cultures and languages with other nations. More even than the gospel light shining into Soviet lives after a long darkness.

As important as each of these is, Finland’s beacon shines also for Church members everywhere, reminding us that despite times of darkness and discouragement, a resolute faith eventually penetrates the fog of apathy and even political boundaries. In this way, a measure of Finnish sisu intensifies the faith and love of Latter-day Saints everywhere.

Photography by Giles H. Florence

Sinikka and Tapani Friström of Helsinki, with children (from left) Jyry, Otso, Pilvi, Tuuli, Pyry, Kukka, Meri, and Visa. Not shown is Suvi (Skinner). Background: Scene in Finland’s Lake District. (Photo courtesy of Finnish Tourist Board.)

Above: Nellie and Aimo Jäkkö of Lappeenranta, beside a loom Aimo made. Below: Kirsti and Matti Salmi of Kemi, Finland’s first missionary couple to serve in Finland.

Mirja Suonpää, Helsinki stake Single Adult leader.

Above: Kari and Arja Lilja at home in the woods, with wood-burning stove in the background, on which Arja prefers to cook. Right: Seija and Vesa Linnanen, with family members.