I about once a month find myself at Mustard Seed Sendai, a friend Tei asks this point blank without much introduction. Not how are you? How’s Kelly no, “What are you doing here?” I was always taken back feeling a bit shocked. Tei recently added “Don’t you have the church in Yamagata?” As if once someone has sworn allegiance to a church mean one can never visit another church.
It always gives me a bit of a pause. What am I doing in Japan? why am i here? And you the random reader are asking the same, what is sus doing in Japan? A question that doesn’t have a straight forward answer. The easy answer that raises more questions is that I am an Evangelical Independent Christian Missionary, serving with my wife who teaches english at a church run afterschool or eikaiwa . I live in Yamagata City, in Yamagata Prefecture in Touhoku, Japan. I am bit of an itinerant IT and A/V missionary traveling infrequently to come along side churches, missionaries, and other groups in Japan spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Japan.
We are serving under the The First Bible Baptist Church of Yamagata, or Higashihara Church/Kyoukai. From what we understand it is the oldest church in Yamagata. It also has about 80-100 regular attenders.
So you know about where, what I am doing how onto the “why?”. Why would anyone choose to live in Japan? Why are you a christian choosing to live in a place with few Christians? Why aren’t you living back in the USA where it’s comfortable and you speak the language?
Faithful Christians like myself are commanded to share the gospel to the ends of the earth in the great commission Matthew 28:19-20. Not all are called to be sent ones or missionaries, but all Christians have a role to play in the spreading of the Gospel everywhere.
Many years ago before I became a Christian, had always had this yearning to travel, and perhaps live overseas some day. True part of it come from my heritage. I am half 4th generation Japanese-American. Yeah my father was not part of my growing up and sure I didn’t have much of a way to learn about Japan in the preinternet era. i would watch travel shows as much as I can and perhaps they’d play one about Japan.
In college I would pull up Fark.com a website much like Reddit were people would post interesting things. and an article came up from the blog of someone Living in Japan, teaching English. I learned about the JET Program and thought perhaps some day I’ll apply.
Fast forward to 2012 when both of us applied to JET and Kelly was offered a role teaching in Okinawa, an island we had only heard about from an anime. We spent one year in Okinawa, got a brief taste of the culture, the people, and the food. But most importantly learned about the on going missions work in Japan. Even though Okinawa has the highest Christian population in Japan it is still small. We prayed that God would open the door eventually for us to serve Him in Japan.
After our year in Okinawa we moved back to Chicago. My mother who had visited us in Okinawa passed way from cancer. I am an only child and she left me her house, and her retirement in full. We took this as a sign from God to move forward toward Japan. We took it as God calling us Kelly and Eric Farrow to the nation of Japan.
We Decided to move to California as a staging ground for Japan. And bizarrely it would decrease our costs. LA also had a larger Japanese population. To cut out some of the details it took us 12 years to finally have open doors into Japan.
Our friend Rafik had spent two years teaching English in the far off prefecture of Yamagata. He believed his time in Japan had come to an end and we were just off being rejected by yet another missions agency. We were given only a few months to sell most of our belongings and move to Yamagata.
There is a lot that happened between Okinawa and Yamagata and a story for another time. We have lived in Yamagata City since March 2024 it’s weird typing this in January of 2026 and realizing that it has been almost 2 years since our move.