A Soviet medical student named Laura finds a living faith in God at a Soviet state university. She is the only student at her university who claims to believe in God who created man and is expelled for her faith. Trusting and obeying God takes her on an unexpected journey.
Laura, married to Canadian citizen Hannu Haukka, obtains an exit permit and enters the Christian radio ministry to the Soviet Union in Austria under the direction of Earl Pöysti.
The Pöysti radio studio moves from Austria to Stockholm, Sweden. Hannu and Laura follow the Pöysti’s. Changes to their service in radio ministry were on the horizon.
Hannu is invited to coordinate Apollo 15 Astronaut James Irwin’s historic journey to visit the Soviet Union and is exiled for 11 years.
Their very first audio cassette in Russian in produced, an “audio tour” of the Biblical sites in Israel.
Hannu and Laura are called to Finland to pioneer a Christian radio ministry from Finnish soil. A studio is built in a small apartment in rural Katinala, Finland where programs were produced for 2 years before relocating to a larger space. Laura is showing her mother Eeva, newly acquired recording equipment.
September 5, 1981, was an historic day. At 20:45 Moscow time, the first Russian program produced in their tiny bedroom studio was due to hit the airwaves. This was a pilot broadcast that carried a ten-minute apologetic message of the existence of God.
The radio ministry to Russia experiences surprising growth. The studio is moved to a duplex-style house nearby. More staff come on board.
Radio programs are being aired to the USSR over 11 superpower short wave radio stations around the globe to a potential audience of 35 million listeners.
Numerous TWR and FEBC sites, a mega power medium wave station in South Korea, KCJB in Ecuador and IBRA in Portugal aired our programs.
Laura’s sister’s family of seven were miraculously granted exit visas by the Soviet government to Finland. They were the first Russian family permitted to settle in Finland since World War II. They suffered heavy persecution in the Soviet Union. Thanks to Inkeri’s family a very popular radio drama program was produced in Russian and aired between 1985-1990.
The first ever VHS video cassette is produced in Russian, with the story of Astronaut James Irwin’s flight to the moon and his faith in God.
IRR/TV CANADA and IRR/TV USA are founded by Great Commission-minded businessman Gordon Donaldson, Hannu Haukka, and Laura Haukka.
(In 2010 IRR/TV was phased out and Great Commission Media Ministries (GCM Ministries) was registered as a new charity organization, reflecting our vast scope of ministry outside of Russia.)
New horizons in ministry. An animated Bible cartoon, the Superbook series, is destined to reach children in underground churches in the Soviet Union.
Soviet authorities pushed back, as Christian shortwave radio programs continued making headway in the country against KGB and Soviet ideology. The KGB attempts to destroy the ministry.
IRR/TV ministry moves from the rural town of Parola to a 1,000 m2 studio and office facility in the Helsinki area. CBN and TBN donated funds and equipment, to help equip the first-ever TV ministry to Russia. IRR-TV Finland is founded and the ministry to Russia gains momentum.
IRR/TV receives 1 million letters in response to Superbook a children's Bible cartoon series aired on Soviet State TV Channel One. The Moscow post office is swamped.
The Soviet Union collapsed on Dec 26 bringing new freedoms for TV and media across the country as the Iron Curtain was no more. IRR/TV opens follow-up offices in Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, and Novosibirsk. Russia State TV signs contract for weekly nationwide telecasts produced by IRR/TV.
Soviet Central TV Channel televises a special Superbook closing program, called the “Superbook Party”. Hundreds of thousands of response letters from over 7,000 cities, towns and villages in Russia are received.
IRR/TV programs on Russian National Television come under fire. Chairman Lysenko defends his decision to keep the programs on the air in the face of stiff opposition.
An Albanian TV crew travels to Finland to dub the children’s Kingdom Adventure series into Albanian, which teaches Christian values in an allegorical setting.
IRR/TV goes on air with Christian programming on over 50 regional TV Channels in Russia.
Political turmoil in Russia begins to surface. TV channels are restructured with leadership changes. The Armenian archbishop requests programs for Armenian State TV.
A vision for media training of nationals begins to emerge.
Media training begins for church workers in St Petersburg. The vision to train and prepare workers to use the media for evangelistic outreach is cast.
Teachers came from Moscow and Finland, and some students from as far as Mongolia.
We discovered that dozens of major ethnic people groups in the former Soviet Union had not heard the Gospel message in their mother tongue.
The first ever Christian TV programs in the Tatar language were produced in the IRR/TV studios in Finland and commenced programs for over 20 minority people groups, largely unknown to the outside world in their mother tongue.
IRR/TV founded the Association of Christian Broadcasters of Russia. Their first national media missions conference is held in Moscow.
Campus Crusade Canada and the Lethbridge Group fund the initial outreach for the program production of 20 forgotten people groups in the Soviet Union.
IRR/TV established the first Schools of Broadcast in Russia with Canadian-based Crossroads Family of Ministries. Students from all parts of Russia and the CIS states are trained for TV and radio ministry.
IRR/TV moves into 11,000 sq ft of new office and studio space. Christian TV programs on the Ukrainian National Television Network begin.
Satellite TV expands beyond Russia. IRR/TV begins airing programs to Israel, China, India, and 22 other countries in Asia over Star World Television. IRR/TV Jewish ministry in Russia is initiated.
The Church in Russia was slowly losing ground as the freedoms of the early 1990s began to dissipate. A more powerful voice was needed to reach the nation. Mega City Media Campaigns, a new ministry model emerged. Preparations for reaching Russia’s major cities with mega city campaigns begin.
A powerful evangelistic mega city campaign begins in Volgograd, South Russia, and expands to Central Asia and Ukraine. Media campaigns become a game changer for urban missions, focused on prayer and carefully planned strategies to reach the lost living in a mega city. Each city was saturated with the Gospel for one month, one city at a time.
Month-long campaigns in two major Russian cities Ufa and Petrozavodsk continue. Highly visible, huge billboards around the city display the message “You can experience the power to change, call this number”.
Mega city campaign in Arkhangelsk near the Arctic Ocean. Ministering to children in prison camps in the Arctic.
Television ministry expands into Southeast Asia. Humanitarian aid to earthquake-ravaged Indonesia and India.
The broadcasting of Superbook begins in the country of Laos.
Mega city campaigns accelerated in Russia due to political instability. High impact campaigns in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan reach 40 million people with the gospel message. The largest billboard to display the campaign message in Ukraine was located on the busiest commuter route in downtown Kyiv.
Unprecedented mega city campaigns were held in Israel. The Gospel was proclaimed in 3 languages in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
14 simultaneous evangelistic city campaigns in Russia, in Issykul Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia, and Haifa, Hadera, Nazareth and Rishon Le Zion, Israel.
The previous name International Russian Radio/TV (IRR/TV in Canada) was phased out and in its place, Great Commission Media Ministries (GCM Ministries) was registered as a new charity organization in Canada.
To be continued...
Laura’s family were Ingrian Finns, who before she was born, fell hostage to a Nazi detention camp near Leningrad during World War II. Conditions were primitive, epidemics raged and two of her sisters died from diphtheria. In 1941, the Nazis commanded the Ingrian refugees to head west to Estonia, a 300-mile trek on foot. Estonia was under German occupation for a time and then came the Russians who expelled all those with Finnish surnames from Estonia. They were once again detained in a prison camp and were eventually released and taken by train to Krestsy where Laura was born.
Laura in a family portrait in Petrozavodsk, USSR
Laura’s father Juho Heimonen, sister Inkeri, Laura, and mother Eeva. Two older sisters passed away at a labour camp near the end of the war.
The first ten years of Laura’s childhood were spent living in former German prisoner-of-war barracks in Petrozavodsk. They were forced to share their room with another family, nine people in all. But not all was bad inside the barracks. A group of “free evangelicals” regularly conducted evangelistic Finnish-language meetings in a nearby hall. Both Laura’s mother Eva and her cousin Vera had made decisions to follow Christ. Even though Laura enjoyed the singing and preaching she was not ready to make that life-changing decision. Her father John proudly declared himself to be an atheist.
Despite the efforts of the Soviet Union to block shortwave signals from behind the Iron Curtain, a Finnish believer in the barracks ‘uncovered gold’ when she stumbled across a Christian short-wave radio broadcast by IBRA from North Africa. Laura was impacted by the programs, but when “intellectual atheism” started to rub off on her while attending university, the influences of her childhood no longer held. There was no time for God or religion.
Laura attended the University of Petrozavodsk. Life on the campus went smoothly until her third semester when every university student in the Soviet Union had to answer the question “Does God exist?” and declare, “There is no God” for their studies to continue.
By the time students entered university the existence of God was not to even be an issue, as it was virtually impossible, for a student to access any religious material in any positive form. The Soviet state had gone to great lengths to weed out religion from their society. Contacts between Soviets and Western tourists were fiercely monitored and controlled by the KGB and its millions of informers. Public religious services were banned unless a church was registered and tightly regulated.
Laura was an exception. She could read her mother’s Bible, and the shortwave radio programs her family listened to had evaded the communist jamming station networks.
Laura (middle) with fellow students at the University of Petrozavodsk where she was studying medicine to become an eye surgeon.
Her moment of decision had arrived and brought Laura to her knees, “God, if you are there, then let me know that You exist. I am not asking for a supernatural miracle to prove your existence… You must see I am at a decision point… if you answer me now, I will surrender my whole life to You, for Your service, but if I do not receive the assurance that You are really there…I will tell the university and tell everyone there You do not exist.”
Laura was consequently expelled as the only student at the university who claimed to believe in a God who created man. The Soviet authorities labelled her as an ideological enemy of society, and she could no longer follow her greatest ambition to become an eye surgeon. The KGB told her there was no place for doctors in the Soviet Union who believed in God.
Laura at home in Petrozavodsk, with her mom Eeva and their neighbour’s son listening to Christian programs by radio stations in the West.
God’s plan for her life began to unfold as she became an active member of the underground church. She fell under KGB scrutiny as she rendezvoused with Christian tourists from Finland smuggling Bibles and literature into the country. She was employed in a woodworking shop and her every step monitored. This meant that she had to be creative with her absences in liaising with believers. The KGB was alerted to anything out of the ordinary by her employer, and she was detained on numerous occasions with the threat of imprisonment.
After Laura’s expulsion, she shared her testimony will fellow students and was active in the underground church. She sang in the choir (back row doorway).
She was offered the opportunity to become the administrative assistant for Georgi Vins, leader of the Russian underground movement but had declined. She would have had to go underground, isolating herself from all contact with the outside world. Vins was at a later date sentenced to prison for many years, until his release in 1979 when the US negotiated his release in a prisoner exchange for Soviet spies held by the USA.
Laura and Hannu’s paths crossed a second time in 1974 while she was serving the underground church as his interpreter…
And so the journey begins!
Hannu and his family immigrated from Finland to a better life in Canada, fearing another invasion by Russia. He realized that God had a plan for his life at a young age as men of God prayed prophetic prayers over him.
Three of the Haukka boys were born in Finland. Left to right: Hannu, Juha (John), and Markus. In 1957 they headed for Canada, with Sudbury, Ontario as their first stop, and on to Elliott Lake the following year.
His mother’s greatest prayer was for her boys to become ‘real followers of Jesus’ and eventually become missionaries. Upon hearing this, a visiting Finnish pastor stretched out his hand, laid it on Hannu’s head, and prayed aloud, “Lord, you see this young boy’s life. Protect him and bless him. Use him in service for your kingdom, as you wish. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” The pastor’s prayer sank into the depths of Hannu’s heart and returned to him time and again.
Hannu’s dad worked in the uranium mines in Elliot Lake, the remote uranium mining capital of the world. The boys made their first commitment to faith in Elliot Lake. Left to right: Hannu, Markus, their Mom, Juha (John), their Dad, and Jyrki (born in Sudbury).
When he was 15, an American evangelist visited Vancouver to conduct an evangelistic campaign. Rumour had it that miracles were taking place and the sick were being healed. Hannu was in the middle section of the 1,000-seat auditorium for a bird’s eye view of everything that might happen. He had never seen a healing before.
Halfway through the sermon, the evangelist paused, let his eyes sweep over the congregation, and said, “I feel led by the Holy Spirit to stop preaching for a moment. I want to call some of the young people to the front. There are 5 here tonight, and there is something special God wants you to do.” One by one they stepped forward as they were pointed out.
Then he pointed directly at Hannu, “You. Yes you, the one sitting at the end of the row. I mean you. Come!” In an involuntary response, Hannu stood up and joined the other 4 young people already in front of the platform and felt the electricity in the air.
“God has a special task for each of you, He will use you. I want to pray for you and bring God’s blessing over your life. You will need God’s special protection, His blessing, and grace for His will to come to pass.”
Hannu was aware that somehow, he would never be the same again, and that something had happened in God’s invisible world. He had felt the wonderful ministering of the Holy Spirit as the evangelist had stretched out his hands towards all of them. He wondered how God could use someone like him. He felt certain there was nothing special about himself. His father was a fisherman and his mother was – a great mother. His family wasn’t famous or rich. No brilliant or talented individuals in the family tree.
A couple of years later, another prophetic moment with a missionary visiting from Kenya, “Hannu, God is calling you to serve Him in missions, you will serve the Lord by winning souls for Christ in a faraway land.” He had felt a surge of power shoot through his body. He knew God was reminding him of the future, but didn’t yet know what all it entailed.
In 1971, he travelled to Finland to attend Bible school, as did other youths of Finnish heritage. There he heard about the persecuted Christians in Russia for the first time. Christianity was seen as the only living spiritual force capable of undertaking the spiritual healing of Russia and he wanted to be a part of that healing.
It wasn’t until then, that he answered God’s call over his life: “Dear God, I want to make you an offer. Here is my life. If you have any use for it, please take it, it’s Yours. You are my first priority. Do as you will…”
His first adventure from Finland to the USSR was successful. The smuggled Bibles didn’t come to light as they passed through border control, as Hannu along with the others had prayed that seeing eyes would be made blind. The Lord answered that prayer!
In 1974, the opportunity presented itself to travel to the Soviet Union a second time to minister to the underground church where Laura served in ministry…
And there their two worlds collided, a girl from Russia and a Finnish boy from Canada.
Hannu caught a glimpse of the power of media in spreading the Gospel when a young man arrived at the underground meeting, from 700 miles away and shared that he had unexpectedly found a Christian program on his shortwave radio. And how during that one thirty-minute program, he became convinced that God was real, loved him, and realized he was a sinner and needed forgiveness. He had gone down on his knees right then and there and opened his heart to God. Within days, his family and his neighbours came to know Jesus as well.
The young man’s heartfelt message to Hannu and others visiting from the West that day, “If at all possible, please increase the programming”!
Hannu was deeply moved… and the young man’s bone-crushing bear hug as they parted ways, along with the happiness and joy that exuded from the young man after he had shared his story, was to forever be remembered.
Who knew at that moment, that Hannu’s vision of reaching millions in Russia with the Good News of Jesus through media was coming together? And that a love story of the ages was already “in the works” and lovely Laura active in the underground church would marry Hannu a couple of years later?
Laura, married to Canadian citizen Hannu Haukka, obtains an exit permit and enters the Christian radio ministry to the Soviet Union in Austria under the direction of Earl Pöysti.
Getting married in the Soviet Union was no small feat.
When Hannu proposed to Laura, the obstacles were insurmountable, humanly speaking, for her to accept his proposal. Even downright treacherous. In the worst-case scenario, they would be bound by marriage, yet be forbidden by earthly authorities to lead normal lives together. Only a handful of Soviets were known to have received a visa to travel to the West, and according to the authorities in Petrozavodsk, Laura was the wrong kind of person to be representing the Soviet Union abroad.
While he was returning to the Soviet Union from Finland over six months after his proposal, he prayed that God would have His will with their relationship. He had yet to hear if Laura had made her decision to marry him. While praying, he felt the Lord impressing upon his heart, “Remember Gideon. If the plan to be married is of Me, get Laura to apply for a visa to come to Finland for a visit.”
Laura agreed to the fleece… she carefully filled out her application form and enclosed various references including the all-important employer’s statement of conduct. After being rejected on her two previous attempts to travel to Finland, she had little faith that she would be granted the necessary travel documents and would be given a passport. If God was interested in her future and marriage to a Canadian, He would perform the miracle needed. Only then would she believe that it was clear that God was behind the proposed marriage and would bless it.
She submitted her visa application to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and as the receptionist went over her documents stated: “You surely don’t expect to go anywhere with this kind of a document do you?” and read aloud “…executes her duties well but is politically untrustworthy… does not take part in social activity (ie the Communist Party) and is not recommended for travel abroad…”
Laura asked for her documents to be submitted as they were, and the receptionist looked at her and said, “If you say so, but take it from me that you do not have the slightest chance of being granted the necessary papers.”
The same receptionist was on duty when Laura arrived with her summons letter and was astonished. “This has never happened before. I can’t figure out how you have been granted permission. It doesn’t make any sense.”
But it made all the sense in the world to Laura. It was truly God’s sign! God had responded to her fleece, like Gideon’s long ago (albeit not for a visa!)
Laura’s visit to Finland was successful and returned 3 weeks later, as promised to the governing authorities. Laura was moving ahead with their plans for a wedding in Riga and was unexpectedly summoned to the KGB headquarters. The officer of the Fifth Division (the arm of the KGB responsible for religious affairs) had heard about the upcoming wedding.
“If you can talk Pastor Bondarenko into registering his church, then we will allow you to have your wedding in this city. If not, I’m sorry.”
The KGB had long tried to force Pastor Bondarenko to register his group, thus effectively placing it under KGB supervision. The pastor was aware that each registered church was required to submit full names and addresses of congregants and pastors were forced to sign a document prohibiting an assortment of “harmful” activities. No Sunday school, child, or youth events until the age of 18, and no international or domestic speakers without prior KGB clearance. Pastors were also subject to discipline, rebuke, and open threats by the KGB whenever church activity began to appear too evangelic or successful. It was no wonder that many Soviet pastors could not accept these conditions.
To persuade Pastor Bondarenko was something Laura would not agree to.
Consequently, the wedding was moved from Riga to Petrozavodsk.
Meanwhile, not only was the KGB in Russia and the State Security in Finland interested in Hannu’s upcoming marriage, but Canadian Intelligence as well. They appeared on his Vancouver doorstep while procuring legal documents from Canada required by Soviet law to marry Laura. They enquired about his 20 or so trips to the Soviet Union. After recounting his experiences, he was offered assistance should the Soviet authorities present a problem for Laura.
In July 1976, wedding bells rang in the Soviet Union for Hannu and Laura. Pastor Kai Antturi from Helsinki and Joseph Bondarenko a prominent leader in the underground church in the Soviet Union, officiated the wedding. The ceremony was held in a private home, an unregistered Baptist church in Petrozavodsk, also home to an underground church.
Guests from all over the Soviet Union attended the “unsanctioned” wedding. The wedding doubled as an evangelical outreach event, in a country where the existence of God was denied. The wedding ceremony was held in the second house in the photo. Wedding guests walked to a reception venue nearby.
Newlyweds Hannu and Laura begin their lifelong adventure in missions. Within days of the wedding, Hannu was required to return to Finland for visa renewal. Amazingly, though not without adversity, Hannu returned to the Soviet Union to await Laura’s exit permit approval, departing the Soviet Union together some months later by train.
Experiencing unexpected delays with her entry visa for Finland, they arrived at the Russian/Finnish border with just 15 minutes to spare. The long arduous exit permit process would have been repeated had they not crossed the border in time. Two weeks later they continued their journey to Austria.
The Pöysti radio studio moves from Austria to Stockholm, Sweden. Hannu and Laura follow the Pöysti’s. Changes to their service in radio ministry were on the horizon.
Hannu and Laura learned the foundations of media work while serving under the tutelage of Earl Pöysti, the “Billy Graham” of the Soviet Union. They served with the Pöysti radio ministry for 6 months in Austria, and 2 ½ years in Sweden. Hannu was initially assisting in technical support, while Laura with her flawless Russian, proofread all of Earl Pöysti’s radio broadcast scripts, correcting grammatical errors. The staunch foundational precepts in the realm of media ministry were invaluable.
Hannu is invited to coordinate Apollo 15 Astronaut James Irwin’s historic journey to visit the Soviet Union and is exiled for 11 years.
In August 1971, Colonel James Irwin became the eighth American astronaut to walk on the moon. His journey to the moon forever changed his view of God and the world. Hannu first met James Irwin in Colorado Springs a few months before his marriage to Laura while on assignment, interviewing for a Finnish monthly magazine.
In 1975 Hannu met with Apollo 15 astronaut James Irwin who was on a speaking tour in Colorado. Hannu joined Colonel Irwin in his private plane.
The Soviet Union was at the height of its being an atheistic superpower when James Irwin shared his faith with thousands of people in Tallinn, Riga, Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Moscow. Surveillance by the KGB increased as the tour progressed. Astronaut James Irwin’s testimony became an unparalleled event in the life of the Church in the USSR. His speeches were recorded, duplicated, and distributed throughout the country.
Astronaut James Irwin’s visit caught the KGB off guard. Thousands of Christians, atheists, and university students heard the Apollo astronaut share his story and his faith in Jesus.
For Hannu, the prospect of joining Colonel Irwin on a trip to the Soviet Union sounded like a fabulous missionary journey. A dream come true. He carefully considered the potentiality of repercussions of making the trip as he was already teetering on the verge of exile, having had numerous reprimands by the Soviet authorities for his activities with the underground church. If the excursion turned out to be a powerful blessing, chances were it would be his last trip to Russia.
He finally decided to go, knowing that multitudes in the Soviet Union would be touched by the astronaut’s powerful testimony that Jesus Christ was the son of God. This was contrary to Soviet pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin who upon returning from orbit declared, “There is no God”. Every student and child in the country knew off by heart “Uncle Yuri’s” declaration and unbelief.
The trip was indeed a blessing… and Hannu’s premonition of being exiled came true as a result of his role, serving as the Apollo tour coordinator. He was separated from the Apollo team at their departure, strip-searched, and declared a ‘hostile product of the West’. “You have visited our country 27 times and have gravely misbehaved on this trip… every point of entry to this country will be futile for you to attempt to enter!” He was exiled from the Soviet Union for 11 years…
But this did not stop him from moving forward serving God’s purposes for the Soviet Union!
At an underground meeting in a private home in Soviet Latvia, the police arrived to disband the meeting. The police withdrew when they realized the speaker was the Apollo astronaut.
Their very first audio cassette in Russian is produced as an “audio tour” of the Biblical sites in Israel.