A Lieutenant Becomes a Soldier for Christ

In 1942, as a young lieutenant, 23-year-old Kalle Salavaara was wounded by an exploding grenade and was sent to a hospital for an operation. “After the operation,” he reports, “I was lying in the military hospital set up in the same school where I had been a pupil. At my bedside was Brother Sakari Kanerva, who had talked to me about the truth many times before. Now my decision was made, and there were only some practical matters to agree upon. I said to myself: ‘Tomorrow at Möysänjärvi Lake will be the terminal point of my military career.’

“The following day Brother Kanerva baptized me. As I was still in my full-length cast, it, of course, got wet and softened during the ceremony. The following morning, the medical colonel Heinonen looked reproachfully at the cast and asked: ‘Where have you been messing around? The cast has completely lost its shape!’

“‘I got baptized, sir,’ was my answer. He stood stone-silent. I felt that he was holding a moment’s silence in commemoration of my death. ‘What did you say?’ the colonel finally asked. Then I was able to give my first public testimony.”

Once Kalle Salavaara recuperated, he used his freedom, as well as his military passport, to move about delivering “solid food” to the congregations. As he set out with mimeographed material for the congregations in southwest Finland, Väinö Pallari, who was working in Bethel, warned him about the police in Matku. Several times they had taken him to the police station for interrogation and seemed to know just when a courier was about to come. Kalle relates:

“When I arrived at Matku by train from Urjala, a sturdy policeman walked up to me immediately and in an official tone of voice asked for my identification certificate. I showed him my military passport. That surprised him. In quite a different voice, he then asked for my certificate of work. For just that reason, I had formally enrolled at Helsinki University. Therefore I could hand the policeman a certificate signed by the president of the university, specifying an assignment of work there, although not indicating what kind of work I was doing. The resistance of the policeman was broken. When I started to drag my suitcases to the waiting bus, he politely offered to carry them. I could not resist the temptation to give him the large, heavy case that contained the banned mimeographed material. Somehow it seemed so safe with the policeman carrying it.”

Many times, the brothers and sisters came by toboggan, by horse sleigh, or by foot to the railway stations late at night in order to get a few banned articles. At times, the winter temperature was -22° F. [-30° C.] “No one complained,” recalls Brother Salavaara. “I saw only happy, appreciative receivers, who brought to my mind the bright words from the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need.’ To them it was like manna from heaven.”

[Picture on page 170]

Kalle Salavaara learned the truth in a military hospital