Today, in 1859, The Finnish Missionary Society is organized as the result of a decree by Csar Alexander III (Russia had occupied Finland). Its purpose is to spread Christianity in Finland although it will later conduct foreign missions.

The FMS was organized by K. J. G. Sirelius, who first worked as the society’s secretary and during 1864–1872 as its first mission director. The FMS mission school was also founded during his term.

The first missionaries from this society graduated in 1868 and were deployed to the Ovambo area in southern Africa that was later separated by colonial borders into southern Angola and northern South West Africa, today Namibi.

The best-known Finnish missionary in Namibia was Nakambale (Ndonga for ‘the one who wears the hat’), a nickname given to Martti Rautanen. From 1880, Rautanen worked in Olukonda at one of the first mission stations to the Ovambo people. He initiated the building of the first church in Ovamboland in 1889, and he translated the Bible into Oshindonga, a dialect of Oshivambo.

By 1960, the society had deployed over 100 people in Ovamboland alone. With a consortium of other mission agencies, in 1966 the FELM was also involved in establishing the China Lutheran Seminary in Hsinchu City, Taiwan.

References

1. Kotivuori, Yrjö (2013-07-16). “Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1640–1852: Klemens Johan Gabriel Sirelius”. Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1640–1852. Helsinki University. Retrieved 2015-03-23.
2. Peltola 1958, p. 91.
3. Immonen, Karita (12 April 2006). “Nakambale – Trip to the Past”. News. Embassy of Finland in Windhoek.
4. “Olukonda National Monument”. Namibweb.com. Retrieved 17 September 2012.
5. “Historical Sketch of CLS”. China Lutheran Seminary.

Also On This Day

825 – Vikings wipe out the monastery on the Isle of Iona. They allow its monks to celebrate mass before slaying them.

1156 – Henry, bishop of Uppsala was murdered by a Finn named Lalli. The seeds Henry planted made Finland a Christian nation around 1160. After Henry’s death, Finns regarded him as their patron saint.

1563 – Reformed scholars issue the first full edition of the Heidelberg Catechism, a Calvinist statement of faith written by Peter Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus. It will soon be accepted by nearly all of the Reformed churches in Europe.

1803 – Death in Edinburgh, Scotland, of John Erskine, an evangelical minister connected with Scotland’s eighteenth-century revivals.

1886 -Death in Wakefield, Massachusetts (formerly South Reading), of hymnwriter Georgiana L. Heath who had written “For the Presence of the Springtime” and “Ye Soldiers of Jehovah.”

1922 – The Hymn Society of America is formed to improve the music and poetry of Protestant hymns and write new hymns relevant to contemporary life.

1947 – An outpouring of God’s Spirit follows a fervent prayer by the seminarian Raymond Buana Kibongui at the Undergraduate Bible Seminary of Ngouedi (in what is now known as the Republic of Congo). Swedish missionaries and Congolese seminarians and pastors had been praying for a spiritual revival.