Why I Moved to Japan: The Prayer That Changed My No to Yes

For six years, my answer was no.

Pastor Seiya Majima is one of my closest childhood friends. During his six years in Bible college and seminary, as he prepared to return to Japan, he regularly invited his friends to move there with him.

Everyone else said yes.

I always said no.

I had led mission teams from Hawaii to Japan. I had seen the need within the Japanese church firsthand. I cared deeply about Japan and believed in what Seiya was preparing to do.

But moving there myself?

No.

The Deal

About a year before Seiya was preparing to return to Japan, he tried a different approach.

He made me a deal: if I would sincerely pray about moving to Japan, he would never ask me again.

I thought that sounded like a great deal.

I would pray, get the question over with, and return to the life I had planned. Seiya would keep his promise, and I would never have to answer the question again.

So I said, “Deal.”

But if I was going to pray, I wanted an answer I could not explain away. I asked God for three very specific confirmations:

1. That a complete stranger would tell me to go to Japan.

2. That someone who understood me and my business would tell me to go.

3. That God would show me this calling had begun long before my mission trips, before I met Seiya, even before I was born.

I wanted God to show me that this was not an emotional reaction, someone else’s idea, or a decision I was trying to force.

I asked for something I could not deny.

The Stranger

Not long afterward, I was photographing an event at The Republik.

While I was working, a man who had been drinking approached me. I didn’t know him. He spoke with a deep Southern accent.

Then he told me that God was telling him to tell me something:

I needed to go to Japan.

It was strange, unexpected, and almost exactly what I had prayed for.

But that was only the first answer.

The Business Mentor

A few days later, my grandfather Phil, who was also my business mentor, suddenly asked me a question:

“Are you going to move to Japan?”

Phil understood me. He understood my work, my business, and the practical weight of a decision like that.

He had no idea what I had prayed.

Yet there was my second answer.

A Prayer That Began Before Me

Within a week of my prayer, my uncle Andrew, an Assemblies of God pastor, told me something I had never known.

My great-grandfather, a second-generation Japanese American, had once shared with him that he was praying for our family to reach Japan.

Uncle Andrew told me that my present and future ministry in Japan was an answer to that prayer.

Suddenly, I remembered something my great-grandfather had told me years earlier.

My memories of him included a bad joke about pigs that knew karate. But I also remembered something far more important.

He told me that our family had been given many gifts. He believed I would become successful one day, and he hoped that, when the time came, I would be willing to lay it all down for God.

That memory landed differently now.

I had asked God to show me that this calling had begun before my mission trips, before my friendship with Seiya, and before I was born.

The answer reached back through generations.

When My No Became Yes

Within one week, God answered all three prayers.

He used a stranger, someone who understood my business, and a prayer spoken by my great-grandfather years before I knew where my own life would lead.

The mission trips had shown me the need in Japan. Prayer made that need personal.

God was no longer simply showing me what was happening there. He was asking me to become part of His response.

That week did not answer every practical question. But it answered the question I had been avoiding: Was God truly calling me to Japan?

I had asked for something I could not deny.

God gave it to me.

Seiya kept his side of the agreement. He never needed to ask me again.

What I thought was a good deal for me turned into a good deal for Seiya.

And the “no” I had repeated for six years became a “yes.”

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