Vision trip: noun. An opportunity for missionary candidates to visit the country in which they will serve as career missionaries.

On July 2, during our recent vision trip, we reached Aomori, a small town in Aomori Prefecture, Japan. We stopped there for one night after taking the shinkansen (bullet train) on our way to Sapporo. We had expected to board another shinkansen the next day to continue our journey. However, we soon realized that there was no shinkansen to Sapporo; only a local train was available, and it would take six hours.

Still recovering from jet lag and not wanting to waste time in transit, we booked one-way plane tickets from Aomori to Sapporo, which turned out to be a huge blessing.
Arriving in Sapporo after a brief 50-minute flight, we encountered long lines at the train station. At first, we decided to take a taxi to our hotel. At the last minute, however, Kwan decided that we should take the bus, and we joined the line behind an elderly Japanese businessman named Yatsu.

“Do you speak English?” Camille greeted him in Japanese.

“Sukoshi,” (Little), he answered. He was being modest; he spoke English very well. Once we boarded, we continued talking and learned that, while he worked in Tokyo, he was born and raised in Sapporo.

“We are in Sapporo because we are planning to move to Japan as missionaries,” we shared.

“Why?”

“Because we were told to,” we replied.

“By whom? God?”

“Yes,” we answered.

When we arrived at our bus station, to our surprise, he invited us out to lunch, where we shared more about our mission with him.

Yatsu is an atheist. We do not know how the Lord will lead, but we would love for Yatsu to be one of our first Japanese converts to Christianity. Please pray for Yatsu, and please consider supporting our project. 

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