A legacy of missionaries
My long escape
At sixteen, I walked away from the faith of my childhood. I wanted success, recognition, and a life built on my own terms. I spent nearly two decades pursuing that illusion, earning an Engineering degree in media technology and a Master’s in Business and Service Design.
Professionally I reached my goals. I became a specialist in service design and marketing, mastering the tools used to build brands, influence audiences, and design digital services. I did everything I wanted: traveled all over the world, partied constantly, and went from relationship to relationship. And none of it satisfied me.
I started to search for a way out of the constant unhappiness. I studied everything that could help: psychology, Eastern philosophies, New Age teachings, and religions, until settling on practicing Buddhism.
Buddhism
To someone so convinced it was all about my own effort in life, Buddhism offered the perfect framework for salvation. Its description of the problem of suffering, which it calls "dukkha", seemed so fitting. It teaches that suffering, the unsatisfactoriness of life, is simply caused by our desires, and through our own efforts in meditation and right living we can be freed from it and reach nirvana, enlightenment.
This is what I studied and worked for years to achieve. I meditated every day, sometimes going for solo meditation retreats in the wilderness for weeks where I meditated all day every day while fasting.
Thanks to my practice, my life did get noticeably better. I felt more in control of difficult situations as meditation gave me mental clarity. But as my sense of control and mental power increased, I fell deeper into the original sin of humanity –pride.
"There is a way that appears to be right,
but in the end it leads to death." - Proverbs 14:12
Finding the source of Living Waters
No matter how much I achieved on my spiritual path, I sensed it won't be enough. There was something fundamentally broken inside. During this time my father died, and God used it to start pulling me towards the Truth.
During my extensive spiritual studies, I also read several books about Jesus, written by different Buddhist masters. It became clear to me that Jesus is the most wonderful being who has ever lived on this planet. More wonderful than the Buddha, or any other spiritual guru or teacher.
I slowly started reading about Jesus directly from the source: The Bible. And that was a turning point in my life. When I read the New Testament, the power of the Living God started to transform me. I suddenly started feeling like studying Buddhism and other spiritual teachings was wrong, that it was somehow leading me astray and messing up my mind. This was very strange, seeing as I used to adore Buddhist teachings.
At the same time, my desire to know more about Jesus grew. Reading the Bible started to feel like I was drinking life-giving water to quench a dreadful, life-long thirst.
Total surrender
My thirst for Jesus led me to my local Pentecostal Church, where I finally encountered Him. He spoke directly to me, through the pastors sermons, addressing my current needs and the things I was going through at the time. I didn't speak about those things to anyone, but Jesus always knew. It was so personally moving that one evening when I was sitting alone in the church bench, I finally promised my whole life to Jesus. My long rebellion was over, I surrendered.
Burnt to ashes
One month after that promise, in November 2020, the kingdom I had spent seventeen years building was smashed to pieces. Jesus took hold of my life and began a work that was as painful as it was necessary.
I was hit with a total burnout that stripped away every pillar of my identity: my mental and physical health, my career, my relationships, and my pride. I found myself in the furnace of God, a season where the Refiner's fire burned away the spiritual filth and self-reliance I had accumulated.
For five months, in the middle of the darkest, coldest Finnish winter, I was paralyzed by severe depression and suffocating anxiety. I had no strength to work, to exercise, or even to be around people. I was utterly alone and stripped.
But in that void, I discovered something profound: when everything else from my life was gone, the only thing left was Jesus. I had nothing, yet for the first time in my life, I felt like I had everything I ever needed.
I now had a loving relationship with the most powerful and wonderful person in the universe, my creator, who comforted me and guided me through the fire.
New creation
As Jesus started to rebuild me into a new creation, He showed me my old life. If I were to have a relationship with the Holy God, I had to face how I had lived my life before. I became overburdened by the weight of the sins I had committed against God, others, and myself. Fortunately, Jesus was close to me as I went through all those sins and asked Him for forgiveness. Miraculously, He forgave me for everything. Jesus freed me from the crushing shame and guilt which had been directing my life from the shadows for my whole life.
I'm still moved to tears when I think about the amazing, complete mercy and grace only a good God like Jesus can give us when we just honestly ask Him for it. A full pardon of such a horribly lived selfish life, and a second chance with a new heart and His own Holy Spirit within me.
Experiencing His amazing love through His mercy and grace made me fall in love with Jesus. He is the most lovable person in existence: perfectly good, merciful, faithul, and patient.
My love for Jesus made me want to serve Him with my whole life.
Journey back to Thailand
God's beautiful puzzle
Even though Thailand was the last place I ever wanted to return to, God quickly made it clear that it is where He wants me to be. The reason remained unclear for a long time, so I ended up taking several trips to Thailand just to see God revealing more of His plan to me.
It was like a puzzle being put together around me. Piece by piece God was connecting me to His family and work in Thailand. I'm only a small piece of that huge, beautiful puzzle God is putting together for the salvation of Thailand.
The seed was planted years ago
Looking back, God planted His call in me much earlier, while I was still living in rebellion. I spent many years with the Thai community in Finland and I heard heartbreaking stories of women who had been driven from rural villages into the trap of the sex industry plaguing Thailand.
It was 2010 when I first felt a deep desire to help the Thai people. But I somehow knew that as long as I was still living in sin myself, I would only end up being part of the problem.
I had already forgotten that calling, but God hadn't. He was waiting for me to be ready to surrender, preparing me along the way.
Part of God's team
Koh Samui International church was the first church I served at in Thailand. That's where God introduced me to a member of the ICA Bangkok church. At the time, ICA Bangkok was planting a church in Surat Thani near Koh Samui, and my new friend invited me to be part of their team.
We took a weekend-trip to Surat Thani and served at Daniel, a Christian international school, which also hosts the new ICA Surat Thani church gatherings. The trust God gives to even His new followers is really incredible.
Repurposing my profession
I spent half of 2023 in Ko Samui, but took short trips to Bangkok to visit the missionary from my home church. He works there for Fida International, one of Finland's largest missionary organizations. As my missionary friend gave me a tour of their work in the heart of Bangkok, something shifted in me.
I saw the massive digital struggles of Thai Christian organizations like The Way of Life. I realized that my 16 years worth of experience in marketing communications and digital strategy weren't just for my own career—they were tools that could be now used to help these organizations reach more people with the Gospel in Thailand.
Wasting time in paradise
After I returned to Koh Samui, I was walking down a beautiful, quiet jungle path on one of my morning walks, surrounded by everything a person could want for a good, peaceful life. Yet, a nagging question in my mind wouldn't leave me: "What am I doing here?". I felt like I was wasting my time living in this natural paradise while the harvest was waiting for laborers in Bangkok.
As a Finn who grew up in a small coastal town in the woods, I always loathed noisy, smelly, crowded megacities like Bangkok. And now I had a strange urge to go back there. I knew it couldn't have come from me. It was the call of God.
Divine confirmation through a cat
God confirmed this new direction in a humorous, unexpected way. In November 2023, a stray cat I was feeding on my yard bit my finger. At the local hospital for rabies shots, I met a Finnish evangelist who needed help translating. He was the first Finnish person I encountered on the island the whole year.
As we talked, he prayed for me and told me clearly: "You are going to Bangkok for mission work." He also connected me with a friend who would become come my closest partner in ministry in Bangkok.
Going all-in
By the end of 2023, I made the decision to commit fully to God's mission in Thailand. I gave away most of my belongings, gave up my apartment in Finland, and moved to Bangkok with just my bags.
However, one final anchor remained: my comfortable role as the UX & Service Design consultant for a US-based tech startup. In the spring of 2024, a door opened for me to leave that security behind. I took it, and walked away from a stable tech salary to serve God full-time.
I've been 'all-in' ever since, living without a stable salary and relying only on my savings and God’s provisions.
The birth of Hodos Wear
For a year and a half, I lived without the safety of stable income. That season of pressure cleared my mind and forced me to think with courage. I realized that if I was to fund the next major phase of my ministry—building a Christian company in Bangkok—I needed to think beyond traditional methods of support.
During this time of need I was constantly praying, asking God for a way forward. Something that builds His Kingdom. Eventually, in late 2025, the idea for Hodos Wear was born. Hodos Wear combines my desire to bring glory to God and equip other Ambassadors of Christ, utilizing my professional background in marketing and graphic design.
God used the lack of a safety net to push me into building something that doesn't just sustain me, but serves as the financial engine for our work in Thailand.
Hodos Wear is the bridge between my professional past and the future of this mission—a way to equip Ambassadors globally while building a lasting Kingdom presence here in Bangkok.
