Editor’s note: Material for this article came from an interview with Aimo and Nellie Jakko and from material from an unpublished manuscript called A Foundation of Faith by John Webster, one of the first missionaries to serve in Russia. For more stories about the Church in this part of the world, click here.

“Out of small things,” the Lord reminds us, “proceedeth that which is great.” This is a story about how the Soviet Union came to be opened to the gospel, and it happened in a most unlikely way.

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In the midst of a thick forest that looks like it came straight out of a fairy tale, twenty miles from Finland’s eastern border with Russia, stands the cottage of Nellie and Aimo Jakko.

To find our way there, Nellie gave us distances in precise kilometers.

It was 14.8 kilometers off the main road, a left turn down a dirt road, past a village of five or six homes, and then Aimo would be waiting out front for us, so we wouldn’t drive on by, accidentally missing their home nestled in the woods.

The forest was splashed with yellow and dotted with lakes, and as if we needed any more reminder how completely picturesque and exotic the setting was, a grandson said with a child’s matter-of-fact wonder, “In the winter, the bears go to sleep, but the wolves do not go to sleep.”

It is a spot too removed from life’s modern bustle, too quiet and forgotten, to be the launching pad of the Church’s missionary efforts in Russia. Yet, in 1989, before the Church had missionaries or members in the Soviet Union, by just being good members, full of testimony, Nellie and Aimo, opened a door that opened a continent.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the first LDS Church built in Russia was spearheaded by their efforts.

John Webster, who served a mission in their area said, “They were member missionaries like no other I had seen, nor will likely ever see again.”

Everybody Knows the Jakkos

It appears that the story began in the summer of 1989, when the Jakkos were invited on a canoe trip with several Russians. Yet in the Lord’s divine orchestration, which moves everything into place long before the event, the story begins earlier with Nellie and Aimo’s conversion stories.

Aimo said “I was 17 years old in 1957 and my mother was very religious and wanted me to go to church. We were always listening on Sunday morning to religious programs on the radio.”

Yet it wasn’t that alone that moved the family, but someone who had the integrity to keep the Sabbath day holy. Aimo’s brother Pentii was a runner, and asked his friend why he was going to church on Sunday instead of running. The answer brought the missionaries to their home and Aimo said, “as soon as I read the story of Joseph Smith, it was clear to me that what the missionaries were teaching was true, and I understood what I should do.”

When the missionaries began to prepare family members for baptism, their father asked that the missionaries stop coming, but the fire was already lit and six months later Jakko became the 1000th member baptized in Finland.

Church members all across Finland have heard of the extended Jakko family. They have been the backbone of the Church for fifty years in a country where it is challenging to belong. The bishop in Espoo is a nephew, the first counselor in Hameenlinn is a son. All 18 cousins have been on missions. The family has more than a hundred members, all active.

Table Tennis Champion

Nellie is a small spark plug of a person, driven, outgoing and friendly. She is a person who makes things happen, running an Internet business out of her forest home that supplies badges and buttons for political campaigns.

She is Dutch and met the missionaries when she was 17 in Rotterdam. When they asked her if she was ready for baptism, she said, yes, but her father took the Book of Mormon away and told her she wasn’t allowed to go to church anymore. Her solution was to borrow the book from the library, where it was only in English, but she phoned the missionaries regularly for reading assignments and kept up her own study.

Three months later her father relented, but, she admits, “I had one problem. I was a table tennis champion, number two in Holland, and I played on an international team representing my country.” This was a sport she loved and had a natural gift for, but to her the choice was clear. Because the team required that she play on Sunday, she told them that she wouldn’t play anymore, and they took her off the team.

“I felt it was the right thing. Do what is right — let the consequence follow. It has made me strong also. When I gave my table tennis up, I always thought I could use it sometime as a missionary tool.”

Little did she know what the Lord had in store for her.

Aimo and Nellie met when he was in the Netherlands on a building mission. She moved to Finland, tackled the language and joined the stalwart Jakko clan.

The Canoe Trip

Now fast forward. In the summer of 1989, Aimo and Nellie joined with the Lappeenranta Canoe Club on an unsual journey. Aimo’s brother had organized an expedition for Finns to travel with Russians from nearby Vyborg, across the border, on a canal that empties into the Gulf of Finland.

The winds that blew from Russia had always been icy ones for the Finns. Their long history together had been a violent one. In 1939 during World War II, the Soviet Union attacked Finland, and though the Finns fought back courageously, Finland was defeated. After the war, the Finns ceded eleven percent of their territory to the Soviet Union, including its second largest city, Vyborg.

The territory was the beautiful Karelia, packed with history and meaning for the Finns, but thousands of them had to flee as the Soviets took control. Thirteen percent of Finland’s population became displaced, refugees who had to find new homes.

Now, however, the chill was thawing, and surprisingly, these Russians, whose movement was so restricted by the government, got permission to come on this trip.

Campfires

During the journey, around the nightly campfires, Aimo and Nellie chatted with their companions, told them about their life — and, of course, that included the Church. “We grilled sausages, conversed around the fire, and talked about everything in the world,” said Aimo. They became such fast friends with Lena and Vasili Golovin that later that fall, another smaller trip was organized so they could spend more time together. Lena had been impressed that they drank no alcohol and loved their family so much and simply wanted more time with them.

Among the participants in that later trip was Andrei Semenov. On a Saturday night, he asked Aimo if he would come fishing with him the next morning. Aimo said that he wouldn’t fish because it was the Sabbath, but he’d be glad to come along and talk.

The next morning as Andrei fished, he asked about the Church to which Aimo was so obviously devoted.

Aimo said, “I told him how the Church helps us raise our children. We discussed specifically what we understand about morality as taught by the Church of Jesus Christ. He thought highly of it, and it seemed to me that he pondered our conversation for a long time. When we arrived back with the fish, he said to my wife, Nellie, that now he knew about the Church of Jesus Christ. It was the very beginning.”

It was more of a beginning than Aimo could have realized. To this point the Church had no beginnings in the Soviet Union. State registration for church groups was city by city, and to be registered required at least ten members, but how could the Church become registered if it couldn’t do missionary work, and how could it do missionary work if it weren’t registered?

It was a catch-22, a seemingly unsolvable problem. How ever was the Church to go into Russia? The Lord has his ways.

Andrei was intrigued by everything about the Jakkos. As a Russian, his paradigms about believers in God were so different from what he was seeing. He said later, “We were surprised that there are people who believe in God and who are ordinary people like us. They camp in the forest. They can talk about everything. They work in other professions — unlike our monks. They don’t drink tea and coffee and we don’t know why.” Until he met the Jakkos, Andrei thought only the aged went to church.

A New Opportunity

The Jakkos continued their friendships with the Russians from the canoe trips, and each interaction seemed to build and blossom. One weekend in October 1989, they traveled to Leningrad, where Andrei’s brother Pavel lived. Being there on Sunday, they contacted the only members of the Church in Russia, the Terebinin family.

Nellie described it, “It was only the second church meeting held in Leningrad. Brother Terebinin presided at the meeting; the first time he had done so. My children spoke and we sang hymns. I cried all through the meeting.”

As John Webster wrote, “Already, ripples caused by the canoe trip were rocking Russia’s resistance to religion.

Then something fortuitous happened, another gift that would further open a Russian opportunity — one that had been orchestrated from long before.

Nellie had begun practicing her ping pong skills again, which had been so long dormant. A fierce and competent competitor, she had a mean forehand and relentless rallies. Through her friends in Vyborg, she had been introduced to a local women’s sports club who invited her to a big tournament Vyborg was hosting for the Leningrad region.

This gave her an opportunity for a visa to enter the country more regularly, and in December of 1989, the Jakkos were on their way into Russia, this time carrying a Book of Mormon. At the border, Russian guards stopped their van and asked why they were going to Russia. She produced her documents and explained that she was the only foreign participant in the Leningrad regional table tennis tournament. Skeptical, they also searched her luggage and pulled out the Russian Book of Mormon. In those confining days, religious material wasn’t allowed into the Soviet Union, but Nellie explained it was a gift, and then impulsively offered it to him.

He refused the gift, but shoved the scriptures back into her suitcase, and the Jakko van was motioned on its way.

Incidentally, this Book of Mormon was part of the family-to-family program where members purchased copies of the scripture, wrote their testimonies in the front, and sent them to the missionary department to be used in the work. President Ezra Taft Benson, who had challenged Church members to flood the world with copies of the Book of Mormon, had practiced what he preached. This copy of the Book of Mormon, certainly among the first going into Russia from Finland, was from President Benson and his wife and contained their testimony inside the front cover.

When the Jakkos returned to the border on their way back to Finland two days later, the border guards recognized her and asked her how she had fared, this only foreign competitor. When she reported she had won, they shook their heads in disbelief and retreated to private quarters. A little mother of five, she didn’t somehow look the part of a ping pong champ.

At last they emerged with a solution for their skepticism. They invited Nellie to prove herself by playing the best of the guards. They led her to the largest guardhouse where a ping pong table stood, a regular pastime for the guards to while away the long, winter months. Nellie was up for the challenge.

While Nellie and the best of the guards played table tennis, they closed the border, and in this frigid, dark winter, cars lined up on either side, unable to get through. In the end, Nellie emerged victorious 21-10, and the question was soundly answered. This little Dutch woman was a champ, and they knew it. The guards were impressed with her friendliness and spirited personality.

The guard, who had been the one who refused the Book of Mormon before, presented Nellie with an insignia worn on a Russian military hat. She responded by offering the Book of Mormon again. This time he took it.

A robust friendship had begun between the Jakkos and the Russian border guards. From then on, much of the religious material that came into Russia was carried by the Jakkos. They passed through as many copies of the Book of Mormon as they could on each trip.

What’s more, with their remarkable gift of friendship, on each trip they enhanced their relationships with the people they had canoed with, the people in the sports club, with everyone they met. If this is what Latter-day Saints are like, thought their Russian friends, then surely the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about love.

The Russians are Coming

During the first week of February of 1990, Andrei Semenov and his wife Marina, from Vyborg, came to stay with the Jakkos. Andrei, a doctor, was coming to observe the practice of western medicine in a Finnish hospital. On the Saturday evening of his stay, two missionaries, Elder John Webster and Elder Donnell Leavitt, began to teach him the gospel. They all learned more about his life in Vyborg, which was difficult.

Food was scarce. Andrei lived with his in-laws. He was a doctor but he barely earned survival wages. The Restoration of the gospel resonated with him, though he had learned in school that all religion was bad. He knew many historical examples of religious corruption. Karl Marx had called it the “opium of the people.” He was intrigued with the idea that the true Church would have to be restored from its original form as Jesus Christ had established it.

The next day they all went to church, and when it was time for Andrei to leave he said to the missionaries, “Why don’t you come to Vyborg for a visit?” Then he added alluringly, “I will introduce you to all my friends and we can continue our discussions.”

It seemed impossible, but Nellie Jakko took the proposition as a challenge. Andrei certainly wouldn’t be coming regularly to Finland, so now she had to figure out how to get the missionaries to him.

To be continued. Watch for Part 2 on Meridian next week.