Welcome
Last year, Greater Grace in Helsinki, Finland, celebrated 40 years as a ministry. In 1975, Pastor Thomas Schaller came as a young missionary to Finland to start a church. Very soon after that, people started to travel to Sweden to share the good news about God’s saving grace. Some of those people were Anna Aleksejev (then Stevens) och Terttu Koivisto (then Lomma). Both of these pioneers will be present at the conference. The first couple who led the church in Stockholm was pastor Bob Anderson and his wife Sirpa. After them, many different pastors have blessed us with their teaching and laid down lives. Several of them will visit us this summer. P. Thomas Schaller, founder of the Helsinki church and presently the senior pastor of the Baltimore church, will be our keynote speaker. He actually led the work in Sweden for a short period (1980-81). Furthermore, will Pastor Matti Sirviö (1986-89), missionary pioneer to the former Soviet Union and the Middle East, bless us with his portion. In addition to that, our friends and missionaries, P. Vladislav Gromov and P. Bryan Coelho, will add to the already impressive list of speakers. Finally, P. Juha Haatanen, head pastor of the Helsinki church, and P. Risto Kyrö, who spent 13 years in Malmö, are among those we will hear from these power packed days. Time will not permit me to go into the details of all the things we have in store for you, but they include meetings, excursions and plenty of fellowship. The Grand Final of the conference will be a banquet to celebrate our 40 years as a local church in Stockholm. The facilities where the conference will be held, the Monaco-inspired Grand Hotel in Saltsjöbaden (built 1893), are fabulous, to say the least. The Baltic Sea can be seen through the window of the conference room and the whole place is breathing history. Famous people from all over the world have stayed here. Members of the last Tsar family stayed here after the revolution as well as Frank Sinatra. These are just a few famous people that can be mentioned. In 1938, a famous agreement between LO, Sweden’s biggest Labor Union and SAF, The Employers Confederation, was signed here. Due to this agreement, there were no strikes in Sweden between 1938-1980. This is sometimes called "the Spirit of Saltsjöbaden". However, in my opinion, none of these people or events can measure up to what will take place July 15-18, 2016. I hope you don´t have any excuses for not being there. To tell you the truth, we will not accept any - welcome!
In Christ, Dr. Mikael Toll (Pastor of Greater Grace , Stockholm)
