European Missionary Fellowship has appointed its first missionaries in Finland, Eelis and Manna Halmemies. Eelis is the pastor of the Reformed Baptist Church in Jyväskylä (about 170 miles north of Helsinki); he and his wife Manna have four children, with a fifth on the way.
Eelis was raised in a loving, conservative Pentecostal family in Finland. He encountered the gospel in his youth, but only came to a personal conviction of sin and understood the significance of the cross of Christ in High School, through studying the Living Waters material. He was then baptised and joined the local Pentecostal church aged 18.
After a year’s military service, he moved to Jyväskylä in 2009 to study chemistry. He joined a Lutheran Bible Study group where he met Manna. After they married, they joined the Free Church of Jyväskylä, where Eelis was part of an evangelistic outreach team before becoming a Reformed Baptist. They, with other like-minded Christians, started a Reformed Baptist church plant in the town in 2018, under the mentorship of elders from two other churches.
