Carelinks | Finland
We have a wonderful brother in Finland called Tommi. He not only knows all doctrines of the Truth, but has really come to the Lord Jesus in spirit and truth. And to have the spirit of Christ is what’s so important, without that we “are none of His” despite all purity of doctrine. We had some wonderful exchanges before his baptism, things like: “I have already started to do my best to change as a person, I am now more aware what I watch and how I act and what I let out of my mouth. I am beginning to understand how much my mind has been corrupted by the media and bad influences. Now the thought of becoming closer to Jesus, trying to do my best to be like him and praise God in my daily life sounds just wonderful to me. It's just quite hard to believe that I have received another chance, I have failed as a Christian and failed as a person so badly and so many times that sometimes it's hard to understand how one could be forgiven after sinning so much.”
On meeting Tommi, he was indeed as good as he sounded. He had told his whole family about his baptism, his sister, niece, mother and step father. They came and watched the baptism, at -5C in a frozen river which winds through their small town in rural Finland. He explains in the video how he wanted to do this to feel something of the sufferings and death of Jesus as he united himself with Him, and also to show his family that he was serious and was no longer as he put it, an “on/off Christian”. So we drove to the riverbank, warmed the car up and left the engine running so we could get back inside it straight away after coming out of the water. It was truly a cold northern night, with an unusually clear moon that appeared to be shining directly upon us in blessing. And so Tommi was baptized into the Lord Jesus. We warmed up and dried off and then went to a pizza place for something to eat. We recorded a wonderful testimony from Tommi as to how he came to the truth, having left the Lutherans and then the Jehovahs Witnessess. He found our belief in the human nature of the Lord Jesus particularly attractive; it beckons us towards identity with Jesus, knowing He had our nature. You can view the quite amazing baptism and Tommi's wonderful testimony at: https://tinyurl.com/carelinks-finland
He wrote afterwards: “Greetings my new brother. Yesterday was honestly the best day of my life”. And he comments on the video: “I get cold again just by watching this. That water was freezing! Still, it was the best decision of my life and I could not be any happier”. Tommi is working on translating our material into Finnish so his mum can also understand the truth and be baptized.
