My Story

From Rural Vermont to the Metropolis of Tokyo

Searching for God’s Plan

I was first introduced to missions while I was still in high school when I went to India with a group from my church. Young and a bit naive about the world, I went into the trip excited to serve others and see another country. Although I loved learning about other cultures and reading about history, I hadn’t experienced anything outside of my rural Vermont hometown and the surrounding New England area. Suddenly, in India I was thrown into a city of 8 million people and saw what real need was.

My team joined alongside some Indian missionaries to minister to kids from the slums through a vacation bible school and help teach young adults who’d go on to become pastors and evangelists. We worked from a ministry center that my church had helped raise money to build, but around us was slums. Just beyond the walls of the center people lived in makeshift tents and shelters made from whatever materials they could find.

The struggles and hurts of the people we saw were tangible. My team did what we could, but it was small compared to the tireless work of the missionaries who reached out and served their communities day after day. The Christians that I met were loving their neighbors and going and making disciples of all people. I had learned about those things growing up in Sunday School, but didn’t completely understand it until then. They were right where God wanted them and making a real impact in their communities for Christ. I wanted to do that too, but I didn’t know where to start.

As I began searching for what God’s plan was for me, I thought I’d found an answer when I got to college. After realizing my first major wasn’t for me, I switched to business administration hoping to eventually pursue something in the field of international business. I saw the possibilities open up before me and put all my effort behind studying business. I joined as many business clubs as I could and made my way up in the International Business Association at my school.

After working hard my whole sophomore year, I was asked to step into one of the executive roles of the IBA after the current student in the position graduated. At that moment I thought all the effort I’d been putting in had finally paid off. The position would look great on a resume and I’d get a good job and finally make a “real impact”.

My hopes and plans came crashing down my junior year. As our business classes became tougher, the students in my department became more cutthroat and competitive at the expense of those around them. I started losing friends and alienating others because of the person I’d become to achieve my goals. The professors explained it simply as the way the corporate world works so we better get used to it. I began losing faith in business. Then finally, I lost out on the position I’d put my hope in because “they found someone better”.

With everything collapsing around me I became depressed. I wondered what God was doing in my life and what purpose he had for my suffering.

By the end of my junior year going into the summer before my senior year, I thought I’d pivot and pursue nonprofit work instead, but all the internships I applied for fell through. With nothing else, I stumbled on an opportunity to go on a missions trip with a program called APEX through the Evangelical Free Church of America. While I was looking at the different places I could go, I saw that India was one of the options. Although I wanted to go back, I kept browsing and read the description for the trip to Tokyo, Japan. It talked about the societal pressures to success and how many people there, especially students, struggled with depression because of it.

I immediately empathized with that because I had faced depression and those same struggles before. Just as much as I needed the Gospel to face what I was going through, so did the people in Tokyo, most of whom had never heard of Jesus before.

I applied to go on the trip to Tokyo the last day the application was open and I was accepted in the spring of 2016. That summer I spent six weeks in Japan with the five other college students on my team and by the end I absolutely loved it.

Called to Missions in Japan

Over our six weeks in Japan, my team and I reached out to students on a couple university campuses in Tokyo, we prayed throughout the city, we helped host a vacation bible school, we helped teach English, and we got to know the missionary team we were working with.

As much as God used me to reach others, He was also working in my heart. While I talked with students who stressed about their next exam or their next job interview, as I saw businessmen and women rushing from appointment to appointment, when I heard that Japan has the second largest suicide rate in the world because of those pressures to succeed, God revealed to me how I was just like them. Somewhere along the way I’d given up pursuing where God wanted me and where I could make an impact for Him to instead pursuing my own goals by my own strength to make an impact for me in order to please others.

After God showed me that (and as he continues to show me that) I was able to give it over to him and find peace in knowing that God has better plans for me than anything I can imagine. Even though I struggle with failure and depression, God’s plans are still good. I can still have hope. Most people in Tokyo don’t have that same assurance though. While I felt restoration and hope again, I saw that so many people in Japan are hopeless and chained down by the idols of success and materialism like I was.

With the encouragement of those around me, I realized I could use my story to help others. In my last few weeks in Tokyo, God opened my eyes to the opportunities I had to share the Gospel and help others using my struggles and experiences. I fell in love with Japan and its people. Working with the team was a total joy to me.

By the end of my trip, it became clear that I needed to go back.

When I returned home, I applied to join the ReachGlobal team in Tokyo for a short-term, two year commitment. I was accepted at the start of my senior year. Then, in the spring of 2017 I graduated with my degree in business and began gathering a team of prayer and financial partners. By February 2018 I had all my support and flew back to Japan.

Called to Return to Japan

My first two years were filled with incredible moments and some of my difficult challenges. I faced spiritual warfare in different forms, I was sick on and off for six months to which the doctors I went to could only attribute to stress, I experienced times of depression and wondered what God had for me.

But I also saw people transformed for Christ. I celebrated with others as they were baptized. I walked alongside my church family as we all grew together in community. I prayed so much and experienced God’s answers to many prayers.

In the highs and in the lows, God was with me and He was working in Tokyo. There were moments where I wanted to go home, but seeing everything around me I thought, "how can I leave all this?” The work of the ministry in Tokyo is not easy and most of the time a very slow process. I knew that if I wanted to make a real impact, I needed to get more involved and continue on the work.

About a year into my time in Japan after a few weeks of thinking about what God had for my future, I was praying on the Yamanote train line during Pray Yamanote. My prayers that day had all been about thanking God for all he had been doing in the city since I had arrived. Halfway through I looked out the window of the train near Akihabara station. I watched as the city went by with its millions of people, and a random question came into my mind. It was, “God, how are you going to reach this city? Who are you going to send?” I don’t know if it was my own insecurities about how God was already using me that brought that to my mind, or what it was, but I still boldly asked it. Amazingly, God clearly answered back that he wanted to use me. He had a plan for me in Tokyo. Immediately peace and understanding of God’s goodness swept over me, and I started crying on the train.

There were other confirming moments over my two years in Japan, but that moment has stuck out to me and helped me see that God wants me in Tokyo.

Soon after that I began the application process to return to Japan as a long-term missionary. In November of 2019 I had the final interviews and was accepted back onto the team.

I spent a couple years in the States building up my prayer and financial partnership team. I originally hoped to be back in Japan after only a year, but due to many different things (including a global pandemic), my departure got delayed to 2022.

Looking back though, I can really see God’s timing in it all. He really blessed me with many amazing opportunities during that nearly three years. I spent a year interning with a church plant in Grand Rapids, MI which taught me so much about life and ministry. I ended up preaching while I was there which led to me preaching four more times at four different churches. In that time, I also earned my ministerial license which is the first step towards getting ordained in the EFCA.

I finally made it back to Tokyo in August 2022 and jumped back into life and ministry in the city! It’s been so cool to see how God has led me up to this point.

If you are interested in learning more about my ministry you can head over to the My Ministry page, or if you’d like to be a part of my story and join my partnership team then head over to the Partnership page.