A “sticky note” summer

As pumpkin flavored items prepare to return to menus and a new small group season at church is about to begin, the summer is just about coming to its close. In my previous reflection, I said that I thought summer 2025 “has the potential to earn a sticky note on my life map.” I want to expand on what this statement means to me and how I think God is prompting me to respond.

Entering my battleground season

Over the past few months, I have received a series of prophetic prayers that have unlocked a new level of my fear of the Lord. I would share them all as a testimony to the power of prophecy and Jehovah El Roi, the God who sees, but it would take way too long. The first prayer though feels particularly important to share, as it set my trajectory for the rest of this pivotal season I am experiencing.

In my reflection from my 2024 short-term missions (STM) trip to the Middle East, I shared about coming to terms with my difficult moments from that trip and how that sort of sent me into an identity crisis… on a less dramatic note, it also helped me decide not to go on an STM trip this summer. I struggled to accept this decision all the way up to the morning of the first STM training at church. The night before, I dreaded the thought of going to Saturday morning prayer because I knew it would be extra full with all of the STM goers for their training requirement. But I felt that was the exact reason why I should go to morning prayer – so that I would not run away from my dread and instead come before God in my honest broken state.

During morning prayer, I sat myself in the front row of the sanctuary to avoid having to look at anyone but God. I could not get myself to sing, but I had a whole lot to write in my journal. I wrote out all of my hurt and confusion, but then God led me to redirect my ruminating thoughts with writing to myself this command: “Claim your ground in the authority of Jesus.” I wrote out a long list of truths that I wanted to believe, and I felt a sense of peace that I had not felt in a long time.

As morning prayer neared its end, I felt a nudge from God to receive prayer from the intercessory prayer team to close out this time with Him. The intercessors were busy praying with STM goers every time I glanced over. In my stubbornness, I ignored the nudge.

Morning prayer ended, the sanctuary quickly emptied as the STM participants shuffled out, and I continued to sit quietly with God. Eventually as I began to pack my things, someone who was basically a stranger approached me and asked to pray for me. I was amused because although I had declined God’s earlier invitation to receive prayer, He sent someone to pray for me anyways. God has a sense of humor!

I accepted this random initiation with zero expectations, but what I experienced was one of the most direct messages from God that I had ever received:

• It called out the exact struggle that I faced during last year’s Middle East STM trip – feeling like I do not have a voice or a space to share
• It challenged the pressure I had put on myself in my career change endeavor – to stop waiting for permission and start asking God more honestly for what I want
• It shared the same language from my journal entry that I had written just moments prior – the command to “claim the authority of Jesus“
• And then some…

I immediately knew that I needed to take this message from God seriously. I felt like He was grabbing my face with both His hands and forcing me to look at Him. The truths that I had written in my journal were not just some fluffy affirmations to make myself feel better in the moment; they are my ammunition in the spiritual war we fight. I need to really attack the lies that hold me back, especially the lie that my voice does not matter, for I cannot exercise my authority in Jesus without it.

This is my battleground season. I have a long way still to go, but I believe that if I can learn what it really means to claim the authority of Jesus, I will be unstoppable.

The missions journey continues

The persistent question of, “What do I want to do?” has been following me for over the past two years. I remember the day in April 2023, near the end of my missions internship in Guatemala, when I had an impromptu conversation with a missionary parent at the international school I worked at. He asked me about how I felt about going back to my engineering job in the U.S. (he would often ask me about my job because he thought it was cool that I help build things that go to space). I told him about how much I was already grieving the end of my time in Guatemala and that, frankly, I would much rather be doing this ministry work over my engineering job. He warned me to stay vigilant when I return to the U.S. and not fall into the chains of golden handcuffs, especially if what I had just said was really true.

Re-entry after my internship was just as difficult as everyone had warned, and I was grateful to return back to my engineering job as part of gaining back a sense of normalcy. After being back in the U.S. for about half a year and surviving the initial deep plunge of emotions in the re-entry transition, I began to let myself seriously consider making a career change out of engineering.

Even though I had been unsatisfied in my engineering career for the past few years even prior to going to Guatemala, I was terrified by the possibility of a career change. I did not know what adult life was supposed to look like without engineering. I chose my mechanical engineering major as a high school student under the influence of my parents and others around me, and now giving myself the freedom to genuinely ask, “What do I want to do?” felt so daunting and unfamiliar.

Another source of pressure on my potential career change came from my desire to go on long-term missions. I felt like the narrative that was circulating in all of my missions circles was that we should be looking to the workplace as the new door into the mission field. I did not want to make missions the be all and end all, such that I would pick my next career solely for the purpose of going on missions with it, but I also wanted to be wise in considering factors like time, money, and transferability. A missions mentor once said, “You young people always plan for your vacations and big purchases, so why not plan for missions that way too?” I just laughed at the time, but I do think he has a point.

Throughout the past year and a half, I have been thinking through multiple different career options, from business to computer science to education to social work, just to name a few. I have researched grad school programs, picked the brains of established working professionals, taken aptitude tests, read books, and watched a lot of YouTube videos, all in hopes of being able to find a career that I would enjoy doing both in the U.S. and in a cross-cultural setting. However, nearly every career path brought me to the same dead end. Nothing that I could think of convinced me to push past my fear of making the “wrong” decision. I wanted God to just tell me what to do, but He was not going to let me get away with operating out of fear.

A different kind of short-term missions trip

In the meantime, a second question that I have been embracing more in my missions journey is, “Why not now?” Perhaps this is less of a question that has a precise answer, but a mentality that keeps me focused on the unfinished task of the Great Commission. It is in this spirit that I am taking a huge step of faith by going on my own personal vision trip to Japan.

When I think about going on missions for the long haul, I know I want to serve among an unreached people group, and Japan is a nation that I think about often. The Japanese are the second largest unreached people group according to Joshua Project (the Bengali Muslims of Bangladesh are the first largest), and I am perplexed by the state of the Japanese Church given how the barriers to sharing the gospel should be theoretically “low” compared to closed countries.

On a personal level, my heart is pulled toward Japan for the distant ties I have as a Japanese-American and for being the land where the first seed of long-term missions was planted in me. I was 21 years old on a family vacation, still feeling like such a baby Christian with having only chosen to follow Jesus the year prior… but by God’s grace, He gave me the eyes and awareness to realize that there is a whole world out there in the same position that I was in one year ago. All these years later, having been blessed with many incredible opportunities that have grown my heart for missions, I wonder if God continues to draw my attention to Japan for a purpose in the future.

In sharing about both my career change struggles and my affinity for Japan with several missions mentors, they all gave me the same general advice: consider taking a vision trip to Japan. Being there physically to pray and observe could provide a lot of clarity on what kind of job I could see myself doing in light of missions and if Japan is a place for me to keep pursuing as a potential long-term assignment. These are my two main objectives for what I hope to discover together with God during my trip.

It is interesting how one “yes” to God can lead to so much more than the initial singular ask. I think of it like in order to see how far a ball will roll, I need to first push the ball. In saying “yes” to God in going to Japan, I have already been able to learn so much and be introduced to new opportunities that I would not have if I was not preparing for this vision trip. Also in the preparation process, I think I finally figured out what I want to do for my next career step and, more importantly, am building confidence to really own that desire… I will share more later, but I find it funny that I had to book a trip to a different country across the ocean to get my answer!

Some closing thoughts

I have emotional whiplash from going back and forth between getting so excited by even the limited information I can find online about all of these different churches and ministries in Japan that has added to my fire to be part of building the Church… and then getting so nervous that I have woken up many times in the middle of the night with sudden cold feet. There are so many things about this trip that scare me. I am scared of the things I am leaving at home that I need God to take care of. I am scared of feeling lonely or regretful or like I failed in some way. I am scared of my identity being attacked and falling for the same lies again. But in my fears I experience the grace of God all the more, as I learn how to trust God to lead me step by step to Him.

In you, LORD my God,
I put my trust.
Show me your ways, LORD,
teach me your paths.
Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.
Psalm 25:1, 4-5

Lastly, I want to share about a moment of synchronicity. In psychology, synchronicity is the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection. Rewinding back to April 2023… immediately after that pivotal conversation in Guatemala, part jokingly but also seriously, I created an event in my Google Calendar for some random date into the future to remind me of my conviction. I had picked September 1, 2025, which felt so far away at the time.

As it turns out, while I might not have quit my job yet, on this day I will be embarking on a four-day prayer walk. I will be walking the Kumano Kodo, a pilgrimage route over 1000 years old that happens to begin in the city of my family’s original surname, and something about that feels special to me. I did not purposely choose to start the pilgrimage on the same day as this Google Calendar reminder, but this was the only specific span of four days that still had available lodging along the route. I like to think that moments of synchronicity like this are bonus invitations from God to remember Him.

The idea of synchronicity makes me think of a line in the song “Rumors” that I have been listening to lot during my battleground season: “The evidence is everywhere.” What would it look like to be more intently searching for the evidence that God is with me, to remember Him, to remember who I am in Him?

以上です。That is all.

じゃあね！ See you later!