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Carelinks | Finland ... continued
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 some-
times 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 Chris-
tian”. 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 Jeho-
vahs 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:
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.
Carelinks | Italy
F
or over a year now we've been sending lots
of Bible Basics and NEV Bibles to various
African contacts in a mountainous area of
Italy. They eventually responded and we were
able to spend a wonderful time with them
in August. They are the usual collection of
Africans in Italy, some long settled there with
their documents in order and established em-
ployment, others in the camps or on the street
now their camps have closed, having gone
through rape and all manner of abuse in Libya
and the Sahara desert, with the usual stories
of seeing people drowning around them on the
sea crossing. But these stories can too easily
become ‘the same old’. These people went
through awful things, things which no human
being should go through and now struggle with
the temptations which arise from trying to
survive in an alien environment with no
employment and with no help from the
Government, for the most part. They can’t
be deported, but they aren’t welcome. It’s
little wonder that the true Gospel has such an
appeal.