Juha Antturi

I was born in Helsinki, Finland as the youngest son of six children. My father was a pastor of a large church in Helsinki and I basically grew up in church. How ever, as a teenager my interests started moving away from the life around the church and more toward exploring . Music was my passion and I started practicing the bass quitar at the age of 16 quite seriosly. I was asked to join several bands, was touring around Finland and did recordings. In 1992, at the age of 19, after graduating from high-school and then continuing with a mandatory military service in the Finnish Armed Forces, I moved to NYC where I was hoping to further pursue my dreams in the music business.  In the Big Apple I found myself playing fulltime in Times Square Church at the Mark Hellinger Theather on Broadway, Manhattan. During my time in New York God radically transformed my life and restored my then broken relationship with Him. I wanted to surrender my whole life to Him and serve Him with all of my heart. I returned to Finland the following year and was invited to join fulltime in the ministry of Helsinki Saalem Church. I also married my wife Päivi in 1993 at the age of 21 years. Then in 1996 we felt that the time to prepare ourselves more fully for fulltime Christian ministry had come. God made a way for us to receive scholarships from Zion Bible College in Rhode Island, USA, which made possible for us to live and study there for the next three and a half years. During the summer holidays we took teams of students to work in ex-communist summer camps in Zelenagorsk, Russia. I graduated in 1999 and we moved back to Finland with our two sons who were born during that time. I was asked to join the pastoral team of Saalem Church and in 2001 was sent from Saalem to start a new church in Vuosaari, Helsinki. In 2003 the Anchor Church (Ankkuriseurakunta) was established. 2004 ended with one of the worst natural catastrophes ever, when the Asian Tsunami killed over 200 000 people mostly in the Northern most province of Indonesia; the Aceh province. I made a relief aid trip there with a friend, came back and after a lot of prayer we discovered that it was God’s will for us as a family to move there as well. We have been living and ministering in Indonesia since July 2006 studying the language and cultures of Indonesia, spreading the Message, training and equipping new workers.