Taisto Valta, a Finnish missionary doctor who later trained as a Free Church pastor and whose medical service carried him from a tuberculosis hospital in western India to Nepal, Iraq, Somalia and Indonesian Papua, has died. Born into a Free Church family in early 1941, he came to a personal faith as a 17-year-old at a Free Church youth ski day in Seinäjoki — a decision, a lifelong friend wrote in Suomen Viikkolehti, that “marked out his entire remaining life.”
Valta belonged to a generation of Finnish free church missionaries whose service was measured in decades rather than postings. Missionaries were frequent guests in his childhood home, and during one prayer meeting he received what he described as a vision that left him certain God was calling him to India. He met his closest friend on a medical preparatory course in Turku in 1962, married Pirjo, and the couple spent two years at a Bible school in Switzerland before departing for South Asia.
In March 1974 the family arrived in Nandurbari, India, where Valta worked at the Sharon tuberculosis hospital run by the Swedish Alliance Mission. Their children Juha and Hanna travelled with them, and a third, Outi, was born in India. When extended visas did not materialise after two years, the family moved to Nepal for two years with the United Mission. Valta later served in Iraq, Somalia and Indonesian Papua in a range of medical roles, and after retiring he returned to Sharon hospital several more times. In Finland he was also active in local politics and in the leadership of several organisations, including Turku street mission, the Friends of Israel and the Finnish Christian Medical Association.
He was, his friend recalled, an “eternal student.” Late in life he completed full pastoral training and was ordained as a pastor of Suomen Vapaakirkko on 5 September 2020 — completing at the same time the studies his father had been forced to abandon in Santala when war broke out three weeks in. Keratoconus troubled his eyes from youth, and at the end he lived several years completely blind; in his final years he was also diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Despite his illnesses he kept his joy to the end, impressing the staff at the Tampere centre for people who are deafblind, where he spent his last two years.
(Originally published in Finnish. Summary translated by CC / Connexion.)
Source: Suomen Vapaakirkko / Suomen Viikkolehti — https://svl.fi/taisto-valta-paasi-taivaan-kotiin/
