MINISTRY PARTNERS
Melanie Mar Chow
Melanie serves Asian American Christian Fellowship (AACF). Since Fall, 1987, she has served students on the campuses of UCLA, Cal Poly Pomona and now USC, she is best known for serving the entire ministry of AACF as a key administrator since 1992 as well and holding various positions in AACFs national leadership. She has been sent by her church, Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles, as an ordained/secunded member of that church.
Melanie is passionate about collaboration, administration, leadership development and discipleship. She is prayerfully asking God to raise a new generation of Asian American students and campus ministers who will bring the life-changing message of Jesus Christ to their campuses. She is always amazed of the quality God brings to AACF in student leaders that love Him and love His people. She loves that God uses her as a “diamond in the rough.”
The Miller Family
Asian Access – Japan
In March 2011 our family traveled to Japan to meet with Emi’s annual missionary conference and visit family. We felt the earthquake on March 11th while in the mountains near Nagano, and watched the TV in awe of the tsunami’s devastation. We experienced the empty grocery shelves, the rationing of fuel, and felt the alarming aftershocks. Holding our then four-month-old daughter Geneva, we left the country with conflicted hearts. Yet, as we departed Japan, we both had a sense that God will redeem this experience in His time. This summer, God confirmed that initial yearning as Asian Access approved our family to serve as missionaries in Japan. Our ministry will be:
Family – We are partnering with an exciting Tokyo-area church, Kokubunji Baptist Church (KBC, https://kbch.d.dooo.jp/ ), to build relationships and learn how to share the gospel in the Japanese context. KBC established a community center in Tohoku to minister to orphans and families affected by the triple disaster. This ministry is called SOLA.
Emi continues her work with the Asian Access missionary families in Japan as the field leader of Missionary Care. Missionary families endure intense pressures, driving the need for essential relational and spiritual support to sustain their family.
Sterling is working part time for A2 in Japan and also part-time with a Christian businessman in Japan. His goal is to learn the language, and invest in meaningful relationships for those seeking Christ in business, in the church, and in the Japanese community.
Larry & Bella Mori
Japan – EFCA / Reach Global
The Moris are serving with EFCA/ReachGlobal as church planting missionaries. They currently are serving in Sendai Japan where they are planting the Sendai Izumi Church. They are focusing on three ministries in the church: evangelism, discipleship and community outreach. Less than 1% of the people are Christian in Japan. Most of the Japanese are nominal Buddhists and Shintoists. They worship ancestors, so it often is a barrier for Japanese to reject their ancestors, Buddhism, and Shintoism to believe in Christianity. However, despite the difficulties, the Lord has chosen some Japanese to believe. So, find and share the Good News to those chosen ones. The Moris hope is in the Gospel being the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes and knowing that God does not want anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (Romans 1:16; 2 Peter 3:9).
Stephen & Satomi Sakamoto Japan – TEAM
Ninety-nine percent (99.9%) of the Japanese souls face a Christ-less eternity. Japan is difficult, slow, and expensive for church planting. If Japan is to be won for Christ, it must be accomplished through growing local church plants reaching their communities for Christ.
We serve with TEAM (The Evangelical Alliance Mission) in Kobe, Japan. Our ministry focus is to start Japanese churches that start Japanese churches that start Japanese churches. We will gather individuals and share the Gospel by relationship building through seven purpose-specific target group meetings, held at various times throughout each month. These seven purpose-specific outreach groups include: parenting classes for young mothers, Bible & baking classes for housewives, Conversational English for children and adults, marriage growth for husbands, marriage growth for wives, youth meetings, and beginner Bible Studies.
Kelly and Mary Catherine
The Fellowship – Canada
Let me begin by sharing how our ministry to international students has helped students like Lee. Ten years ago Lee was an international student from East Asia who God saved through our ministry on campus. We discipled Lee and trained him during his time with us, and today he is a missionary in his country, reaching university students and mobilizing churches to be involved in sending missionaries to the Muslim world.
After 24 years of student ministry with both Canadian and international students, my heart is to equip and connect local churches, and student ministries, and returning missionaries to collaborate in their cities, in order to make disciples among international students studying in Canada.
God has brought the nations to Canada through international students. Of the 620,000 international students studying in Canada, 30% are from India and 25% are from China. India and China are the top two countries respectively with the largest number of unreached people groups.
What if the next greatest wave of missions mobilization did not come from sending Canadians oversees, but came from mobilizing Canadians to reach international students studying in Canada?
My heart is for Jesus to use His church in Canada to make disciples among all nations through reaching, discipling, training and sending international students to make disciples of all nations, especially among the unreached people groups.
Andy & Junko Meeko
Japan – World Venture
The Call: Developing tools and training nationals for emotional care and evangelism.
It’s hard to admit, we are celebrating more than 60 years of combined Japanese ministry. Junko is born and bred in Japan and was serving long before meeting Andy. The youngest son of missionaries to Japan, Andy couldn’t resist God’s call, despite vowing to never be a missionary.
We believe Japan will be reached by average Japanese Christians. Believers in Japan can do amazing things if they are given a little assistance. We train people as community caregivers reaching the depressed, anxious, and suicidal, plus we train them to share the life-transforming gospel of Jesus Christ.
Japan is one of the most gospel-resistant nations in the world, but there is amazing change. If our trainee shares Christ with two people, it’s likely one will trust Jesus!
Ellen & Phil Hoffman
Soul Reparations – Seattle
For far too long the church and western Christianity having centered White male theology and teaching. We recognize this has been harmful and toxic to our spiritual formation as women of color. How we see God, and how we see ourselves in relation to God as women of color, needs to be reclaimed and explored in safe spaces. Who is God for US?
This, combined with the increased violence done to Women of Color in our country and the technology to instantly spread news and images to the palms of our hands, we are experiencing trauma at new levels. How is God for US?
The injustice that has come at the intersection of gender, faith and race requires reparations for our soul.
We believe spiritual direction with a Women of Color who is FOR Women of Color, is a space where this can happen. We serve ALL women who identify themselves as Women of Color: Black, African, Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Southeast Asian, Native American, Multi-racial, Latina, and Queer Women of Color.
Recovery Café – Seattle
Recovery Café was founded on the knowledge that every human being is precious and beloved regardless of past trauma, mental and emotional anguish, addictive behaviors or mistakes made.
We provide a beautiful, safe, warm, drug and alcohol free space and loving community to anchor Members (our most closely-supported consumers) in the sustained recovery needed to gain and maintain access to housing, social and health services, healthy relationships, education and employment.
Our program is designed to help people maintain recovery, reduce relapse and fulfill their potential. We provide support, resources and a community of care along the entire continuum of a person’s need for recovery assistance.
Whether in crisis, newer to recovery, in long-term recovery, after a relapse, during a difficult life change, or mental health transition, the Café is there as a refuge of care with evidence-based addiction support and love.
We teach people ways to manage mental health, maintain sobriety, and build community. We help each individual reclaim life as a person worthy of giving and receiving love.
Operation Nightwatch – Seattle
We are a grass-roots, volunteer-led group of people dedicated to loving our neighbors who are poor and homeless. Through the years, as the downtown Seattle community has changed, so we also have shifted our focus to meet emerging needs.
Volunteers provide a hot meal for our homeless friends, late at night. We start serving at 9:00 pm, after other programs have closed and gone home. All the food is donated – sometimes by the cooking group, sometimes by others. Every cooking group figures out its own menu, based on what is on hand or what they bring. Each night is different.
We provide overnight shelter for men and women, through a series of partnerships with other organizations. Sometimes we pay a fee to the organization providing the shelter. Sometimes these partner organizations let us “top off” their existing shelter space, to make sure that people can get inside.
Support for formerly-homeless seniors is big on our list. We have a small senior apartment building with 24 units for people over age 62. They share bathrooms and kitchens in a dormitory-style setting. Having fun with a group of our tenants is always entertaining!
We started as a street outreach ministry over 50 years ago, and we’ve never stopped. We make friends and bring resources to homeless people. There’s nothing like handing a slice of hot pizza at 10:00 pm to someone who had a tough day. When they move into housing, Nightwatch is there to help find a bed, order up a microwave, check in for coffee.
There’s more. We help people with getting outfitted for work, replacing ID, getting someone caught up on union dues after a long lay-off. And we will send a Nightwatch client home, if they have a home in another city. And we constantly strive to educate ourselves and others about homelessness.
Garfield Nishioka
JEMS/AACF – PNW Regional Director
We are committed to sharing Jesus’ powerful love and amazing grace with those who are seeking for hope, meaning or purpose in their lives. We are also committed to helping all Christ followers deepen their connection with God and become fully devoted followers of Jesus. In partnership with PNW Asian American churches, we are reaching college students thru our four AACF campus ministries (UW Seattle, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle University and UW Bothell), reaching adults, children, youth and those with special needs thru our Warm Beach Summer Conference and through our Spring Concert and other events during the year. We believe in the church, Christ’s body, as salt and light to the world (Matthew 5:13-16) and seek to partner with area churches to help fulfill the mission and vision the Holy Spirit has given them to further the Kingdom of God in the Pacific Northwest.
I would like to invite you to join with me in this powerful work by becoming a member of my prayer and financial support team. JEMS ministries have been an important part of my life and spiritual formation starting with my parents, Rev. Dick and Alice Nishioka, and from my early childhood years going to the JEMS Mt. Hermon Family Camps every summer. I am so grateful for this amazing opportunity to serve God and to serve others and to my wonderful family – my wife, Michele, and our children, Jayna and Cameron – for their love and support.
Gordon & Maria West
KidZ at Heart –International
The majority of churches around the world consist of 75 or fewer members. They have limited resources and few trained leaders, especially in the area of children’s ministry. Because of this, most publishers, resource providers, and trainers simply ignore this majority. Whether these under-served churches worship in urban centers, suburbs, or rural areas of Latin America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, or North America, these churches need our help to train the parents, grandparents, and leaders who have relationships with children.
Over 2.3 billion children need to know how much Jesus loves them. So we’re asking you to help serve the under-served churches around the world…as they reach the unreached children of their own cultures.