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In Step With the Spirit: My Journey to Japan
God has been leading me step by step, and now that journey has brought me to Tokyo, where I’ll serve with Student Mobilization to help reach the next generation with the hope of Christ.
I’m preparing to move to Tokyo, Japan, to work full-time with a ministry called Student Mobilization (StuMo). Our mission in Japan is to build laborers for Christ among the next generation and plant churches near major universities in Tokyo.
I’ll serve on the Area Team, helping with operations for the churches and teams while also ministering to college students and young adults.
Five years ago, God began working in my heart to lead me overseas. Going into college, I measured my worth by the approval of others and my achievements, and I was weighed down by anxiety and worry. I started my freshman year at UT in the fall of 2020—no in-person classes, nobody I knew from high school, and desperate for friends and purpose.
On the first day of class, I decided to go for a walk around campus and ran into two girls who said they were part of a campus organization called StuMo. We started hanging out, and they shared stories from the Bible. I had grown up in the church, so I felt like I knew all the answers they were looking for—until they asked me what my relationship with God was like.
I had never thought of it that way: a relationship with God, not just rules and things to follow. I realized I didn’t have the confidence of knowing Him personally. I knew of Him, but I didn’t know Him.
Many questions and Bible stories later, I entrusted my whole heart and life to Christ—trusting that Jesus wasn’t asking me to be perfect, that I couldn’t earn my way into Heaven, or please the world. I learned that God loved me uniquely and deeply.
Later that summer, at a missions conference, I learned about the unreached for the first time. I had known of missions in the sense of meeting physical or medical needs, but I had never heard about people going overseas because of a spiritual need—over 3 billion people in the world have little to no access to the Gospel. I thought, “This isn’t personal. I don’t think I could do that.”
As I thought it, the speaker shared a statistic about Vietnam being unreached—and I froze. I thought of my Vietnamese family, my relatives and loved ones who are part of the unreached. Suddenly, it became deeply personal. That moment sparked a small yet powerful sense of compassion and purpose in me.
I began praying that my hands would be open and my heart willing to follow wherever God led. I started Bible studies with international students and found great purpose in being a friend who could point them to Christ. As I prayed about what it might look like to move overseas, God began to put Japan on my heart.
Tokyo is one of the largest and most influential cities in the world, known for its innovation, beauty, and culture. Yet beneath that, Japan carries some of the highest suicide and depression rates in the world. With less than 1% of the population identifying as Christian, Japan is home to one of the largest unreached people groups in the world.
I had the opportunity to go on a summer team to Tokyo, and it started to feel like this was something I could actually do. One moment stood out to me: I was sitting on my little floor bed, reading a prayer book I’d been given before the summer. A line from it engraved itself in my mind:
“We resist the urge to sprint ahead in a hurry or lag behind in fear. Let us keep company with you at a walking pace, moving forward together one step at a time.”
Later, as I walked down the streets in Shinjuku, I looked up and saw a crosswalk sign—little stick figures walking hand in hand. It was exactly how I envisioned that prayer: an image of God walking beside us, one step at a time, His hand in ours.
I pasted that image everywhere: on my Spotify playlists, doodles in my journal, and phone wallpapers. It became a reminder of how I want to follow God. To stay in step with His Spirit, not running ahead in haste or lagging behind in fear, but saying yes to Christ one step at a time.
Japan needs to hear the good news of Jesus. And God, who is worthy of worship from every nation, promises His name will be great among them all.
Looking around Tokyo, I was filled with compassion. The people were harassed and helpless, struggling in isolation and lost without purpose—the only hope and medicine being the good news of Christ.
Coming back to Austin, I spent six months in a group where I learned to abide and delight in God, how He uniquely made me, and how to discern His call to overseas missions. Over time, God filled me with peace and confidence about joining StuMo in Japan. Saying yes to God in the steps before, made moving to Tokyo a clear and simple decision.
I don’t have to know every turn in the path—I just need to know who I’m walking with. Our steady and loving God is faithful in every step before, with, and after us. That makes it much easier to be faithful with the step in front of us.
I can’t wait to be in Tokyo—to walk with God one step at a time and witness how He moves among the Japanese people.
“I don’t have to know every turn in the path—I just need to know who I’m walking with.”
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