Transcript: So as a young adult, as a practicing Lutheran, I was wondering, “Is this it? Is this how it feels like if you've given your all to God?” I felt like how I was living… the faith was not fulfilling me. God wasn't penetrating my everything, like everything that I do. So I had this interior restlessness of finding more, finding a way to really practice my faith in a way where I would feel fulfilled in my everyday life.

So I was born in a Lutheran family. Most of the people in Finland are Lutheran. It's a traditionally Christian Lutheran country. I was baptized as a baby. And I can say that I come from a Christian environment, like a Christian culture. So my grandma would teach me how to pray before going to bed. At Christmas, we would read the gospel from the Gospel of Luke. So we were really celebrating Christmas in the Christian sense that it's a feast of the birth of our Lord. And then as a pre-teen, when I was 12 or 13, I started to read the Gospels by myself. A big factor there was the influence of my older sister, who then eventually invited me to this Bible study circle, where she was attending.

In high school, I decided that I wanted to study theology. And studying theology in Finland,it's like a normal thing. It's not so strange. I got really good friends there, really good Christian friends with whom we would form our own Bible study circles, our own prayer groups, and we would attend Lutheran Mass together on Sundays. We would attend these student evenings, organized by this Christian student organization. So I was like… I was living my faith. I pretty actively was a practicing Lutheran, but I still had this… like, “There has to be something more. I need something more.”

So after the second year of my studies at the Faculty of Theology in Helsinki, I took part in this trip to the Taizé community in France. During that week you take part in the prayer life of the religious brothers and you sing these contemplative songs that they have. There's a Bible reading, and after that there's a ten minute silence. Now, this for me was a completely new way of praying, because what I was familiar with was to pray with other people, like out loud or to read the Bible and God speaking to me and my heart through the Bible text. But just being in silence in the presence of God was something new to me. So during one of one of those moments of prayer, I had this moment with God where he almost slapped me in the face. So I knew at that moment that God was telling me, “Your life is going to change drastically after this, your life is going to change.”

And then after the trip, I kept Googling things, so I was thinking, maybe God wants me to be a nun. Because somehow I had this idea that God wants my everything. I ended up on the web page of the Catholic Church in Finland. Now they have this question there: how to become a Catholic. I saw that question and I had another moment like, boom, this is it. I just knew seeing that question, I knew that this is it.

And now at this point, I didn't know any Catholics in Finland. My conversion to Catholicism came out of nowhere. My first real contact was in the Taizé community where their liturgical life is Catholic and there are many Catholics there. But in Finland, no one.

I went on this Catechism course. I was so sure at this point already that I'm going to become a Catholic. So then little by little I started to receive answers to these questions that I had, like, how can God penetrate my whole life? How can my faith show in everything that I do? So I received Confirmation, First Communion and also you say the Creed out loud in front of everyone. So then after that, when I would receive Christ in the Eucharist, that was really life-changing. And also Confession, that was also something that really changed my everything. I couldn't even expect how it was; it was so powerful.

So right after my conversion, concretely, after the Mass where I got the sacraments, someone from Opus Dei, she approached me and then we exchanged phone numbers. Then little by little, we started to know each other. And then at some point, when we already knew a bit better, she invited me to the student residence. And then I started to make more friends at the residence with the members of the Work. Also other people, like residents and other young people who are going there. And I started receiving spiritual direction, more formation like a catechism course, and that really helped me in the beginning of my journey as a Catholic, because it really came out of nowhere. So I really needed more instruction.

And yeah, it was super helpful to have more consistent spiritual direction and eventually finding my spiritual home. Because then through the accompaniment of these people, I found my vocation in Opus Dei. So God can really ask anything from anyone. Like something that you really didn't expect. And if you are willing to open your heart to God, open your heart to his love and open to answer to this call of love, your life can really change completely.