Seventy-seven young people from Finland's Free Church congregations gave up their summer holidays this year to join short-term mission teams organised by The Legacy Project, the youth mission initiative of Suomen Vapaakirkko. Working in ten teams, they travelled to seven destinations — Japan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Greece, Thailand and Iceland, as well as to immigrant communities within Finland itself. The participants' average age was around 21, but a substantial number were minors, the youngest of them 13.
The Legacy Project is built around a simple idea: give young people a first, hands-on encounter with missionary work by sending them out for a few weeks, in the hope that some will go on to longer-term service. Many come home, in the organisers' words, with hearts beating faster and the thought that long-term mission might be where they want to direct their lives. For a national church the size of the Finnish Free Church, this short-term route is the main way its missionary engagement is renewed, and the numbers this summer suggest it is doing that work. Some teams lived alongside local people in their own villages under basic conditions, while others encountered long-term mission in the middle of large cities. Several travelled through schools, villages and prisons, speaking to large groups.
In Ethiopia, the team member Roope Tuuliranta explained his own motivation plainly: "I went because Jesus has changed my life, and the greatest privilege is to share that love, which has changed my life, with others too." In villages in Ethiopia and Cambodia, organisers report, people heard the name of Jesus for the first time, and some village leaders began to follow him and discarded their traditional charms. In Thailand, teams said thousands heard the gospel in schools and prisons. The Japan team spent part of its time helping a local pastor couple renovate their garden, while in Greece a group of 13- to 19-year-olds served in refugee centres and churches on their first mission trip. One participant, Katariina Jokimies, described an evening in a remote Ethiopian village where almost everyone present knelt, wept and prayed in their own language. "In that moment I understood more," she said, "how deep Jesus' longing is that every person should truly know him."
(Originally published in Finnish. Summary translated by CC / Connexion.)
Source: Suomen Vapaakirkko / Suomen Viikkolehti — svl.fi
