Written by Kelly Chan, Staff for Kansai region.
I grew up in a half-Christian family. My father was not a Christian, but my mother took me to church from a young age, so I was always exposed to Bible stories and believed that God's word is true. I made a decision to become a believer in high school, but it wasn't having my true faith until I got involved with KGK in Taiwan. During my college years my faith began to grow and I started to develop a close relationship with God. Most of the KGK ministries I participated were camps, through which I not only grew in my ministry skill, but my faith was also strengthened at each camp, which is why I love camps. After I graduated from college, I still served in KGK ministry in Taiwan from time to time. At one of the camps, I was sitting at the PA area, looking at the younger generation in front of me, and a strong emotion suddenly came over me, so I said to God, “God, if you are willing, I want to keep serving this young generation!" As I look back over the past twenty years, I know that God heard my prayer and answered it.
God's calling me to be a missionary has been a very incredible process. In my life before my senior year of college, I had never had a good feeling about Japan. First, I learned from history in high school about Japan's treatment of the Chinese during World War II, and second, I was very unimpressed by my first trip to Japan. But God took six years and four calls for me to be His missionary to Japan. From my last year of college to the time I started working, God's call to me was progressive. He used Japanese dramas to open up my interest in Japan, and then He used Japanese dramas to create questions and curiosity about the culture, and then He put the missionary call into my heart, and then He connected the two together and made me realize, "He wants me to go to Japan as a missionary!"
During the time of recognizing His calling, God has also been equipping me through my work. He has led me to work in non-profit organizations as a volunteer recruiter and manager. Recruiting, training, managing and leading volunteers to do volunteer work not only equipped me to lead and help the volunteers realize their strengths and become friends with them, but also to enjoy the company of university students and to listen to what they are experiencing in their lives, and how to share the gospel naturally, which prepared me to be a student evangelist in the future.
And years later, I confirmed God's call to me when I took a long vacation from work and went on a short-term mission trip to Tokyo for two months to see if God was really calling me to go to Japan.
After confirming my call, I went to seminary to be prepared, and after serving in the church for a year after graduation, I was sent to Japan in 2013. After graduating from Japanese language school, I moved from Hokkaido to Tokyo at the end of 2014 and started serving. In 2018, I changed from volunteer worker to a KGK staff, and I have been serving KGK since then.
Many people may think that “student evangelists” is a ministry for young shepherds, and as they get older, they should move on to other ministries. Maybe this is true for some people because this is the path that God has prepared for some people; or maybe as they get older, they realize that they are losing touch with young people's conversations, and it is hard for them to capture their hearts. But when I look back at the staffs who accompanied me through my college years in Taiwan, some of them were young and some of them were old, and the most memorable one was a senior staff in his sixties, who often told us, “We have to use our lives to influence other's lives!" That is to say, we have to live our lives in a way that is Christ-like, and other people will be influenced by it. At that time, I didn't feel I didn't want to talk to the staff just because he was my grandfather's age. When he talked to me, I was not only surprised, but I wanted to hear his life story, to ask him if he had struggled with his faith, and to know if he had encountered any temptation, and how he faced it.... It was also because of this 60-something year old staff who was still serving university students that I realized, “When God puts a certain people group in your heart, unless He removes that feeling one day, His grace is definitely sufficient for you to serve that people group all the time." For me, God has put university students on my heart, so no matter how much I grow in age, no matter if I can keep up with the conversations of the young people, God has allowed me to serve the young people, no matter how long it takes, I am willing to do it.
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