Merja (Lea Mirjami) Koski, who served as a Finnish Free Church missionary in Spain for more than three decades, died on 12 May 2026 at the age of 92. Her death was reported this week by Suomen Viikkolehti, the weekly newspaper of the Free Church of Finland. Koski was among the first wave of Finnish Free Church missionaries to Spain, arriving in Barcelona in 1972 and continuing in active service until her retirement in 1998.
The Free Church of Finland (Suomen Vapaakirkko, SVK) has maintained a long-standing mission presence in Spain, where evangelical Christians remain a small minority within a historically Roman Catholic society. Koski worked in close partnership with an evangelical Baptist congregation in Barcelona, devoting herself to women's and youth ministry, Bible teaching, evangelistic outreach, hospital visitation, and pastoral care. Her decades of quiet, faithful service helped to strengthen ties between the Nordic free church tradition and the growing evangelical witness in Catalonia — work that preceded and paralleled the development of FIEIDE, the Federation of Independent Evangelical Churches of Spain, which today is a member of the International Federation of Free Evangelical Churches.
Born in Nastola, Finland, in 1933 as one of seven siblings, Koski came to faith as a young person and trained at the Free Church college in Santala as an evangelist. Before departing for Spain, she travelled across Finland with her sister Kirsti, holding meetings in private homes and staying overnight with host families — the classic pattern of Finnish free church itinerant ministry. After a fellow church worker's parents died in the late 1970s, Koski moved in with her colleague Maria Teresa, and the two women shared a home for more than forty years, first in Barcelona and later in the coastal town of El Vendrell. Colleagues remember her for her hospitality, her love of baking and gardening, her voracious reading, and above all her steadfast commitment to intercessory prayer. "I believe many of us carry memories of Lea's hospitality, her care, and her prayers," the obituary notes. She is survived by her sister Kirsti and a wide circle of friends and fellow workers in both Finland and Spain.
(Originally published in Finnish. Summary translated by CC / Connexion.)
Source: Suomen Vapaakirkko / Suomen Viikkolehti — svl.fi
