Last month, we reflected on the sovereignty of God — that God rules over the whole road.

Now, writing this from West Asia, another truth has become especially precious to us:

Paul points to this reality:

When Paul stood in Athens in Acts 17, he spoke in a city filled with temples, idols, and religious devotion. The assumption behind so much pagan worship was that men could somehow house, tend, appease, or supply the gods.

Paul overturns that entire way of thinking.

The true God is “the God who made the world and everything in it.” He is the Creator, not a creature. He is “Lord of heaven and earth.” Nothing exists outside His rule, and nothing existed before Him from which He could receive what He lacks.

Therefore, Paul says, God is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything.”

That phrase is staggering.

God has no deficiency for creation to fill.

He does not need our strength, our resources, our obedience, our money, our churches, or our missionary efforts in order to become more complete. He possesses all life, goodness, glory, and blessedness in Himself. Creation contributes nothing to God that He did not first give.

Paul immediately tells us which direction the giving actually moves:

“He himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”

God is not the needy one.

We are.

He is not sustained by His creatures. His creatures are sustained by Him.

And that changes the way we think about missions.

God does not need missionaries. Tokyo is not waiting for us because some deficiency in God must be supplied by our arrival. The mission does not begin with something lacking in Him. It begins with the fullness of God overflowing in His purpose to make His glory known through Christ among the nations.

And yet, in astonishing kindness, this all-sufficient God chooses to use weak and dependent people.

That has become very real to us.

Over these past several weeks, we have felt our limits. We have been tired. We have been sick. We have crossed borders and time zones, packed our home, said difficult goodbyes, continued raising support, cared for our family, and eventually stepped onto a plane carrying our lives into a new country.

We are not sufficient for this.

But that was never the requirement.

Our confidence is not that we have enough strength for everything the Lord has placed before us. Our confidence is that He does.

The God who sovereignly ordains the road is the same God who supplies everything necessary to walk it.

He gives life.

He gives breath.

He gives everything.

July was one of the fullest and most demanding months of this entire season.

We began the month finishing our time with family and friends in San Diego. Within days, Kris boarded another flight for nearly two weeks of filming with Reaching & Teaching across Istanbul, Cairo, and Paris. He returned home to a family entering the final stretch of overseas preparation — support meetings, appointments, packing, ministry responsibilities, and the growing reality that our time in the United States was almost over.

And before the month was finished, we were on the road again, preparing to spend time with our Immanuel Network partners at Fordham Community Church in the Bronx.

Now, several weeks later, we are writing this from our apartment in West Asia.

So yes — this newsletter is late.

But there has been a lot of life between the last one and this one.

And looking back over July, one thing becomes increasingly clear: the Lord sustained us through a month in which we repeatedly reached the end of ourselves.

July began with the tail end of our time in San Diego.

After months of church visits, preaching, support meetings, travel, and preparation, those few days gave our family something we deeply needed: room to breathe.

We spent time with dear friends, shared more about what the Lord was doing in our lives, and Kris spent meaningful time with his brother after years apart.

As our departure drew closer, we became increasingly aware that preparing for missionary life is not only about what you are going toward. It is also about what you are leaving behind.

Friendships. Family rhythms. Familiar places. A church that has loved and shepherded us. People who have known us through ordinary years of life.

The Lord was kind to give us time to enjoy some of those relationships before the pace accelerated again.

Only days after returning from San Diego, Kris left with the Reaching & Teaching creative team for nearly two weeks of filming across West Asia, Egypt, and France.

This project took our crew through three enormous global cities, documenting missionary work and helping tell stories that we pray will serve churches considering their own role in the Great Commission.

The trip was demanding. Our team dealt with sickness while traveling, long production days, constant movement, international logistics, and the ordinary exhaustion of carrying equipment through multiple countries.

Meanwhile, Linh and Judah remained home during an already intense season of preparation.

We came away grateful — grateful for the work, grateful for the people we were able to serve, and grateful that the Lord sustained both the team abroad and our family at home.

It was also a reminder that we are finite.

Cameras run out of batteries. Bodies get sick. Creativity gets tired. Schedules change. Plans have limits.

The Lord does not.

Returning from the filming trip did not mean things slowed down.

Almost immediately, we entered the final stretch of preparing to leave the United States.

Support conversations were still happening: meetings with our sending church, medical appointments, ministry responsibilities, equipment and household decisions, documents to prepare, things to sell or store, luggage to organize, and countless details surrounding an international move with a toddler.

It was one of those seasons where the to-do list seemed to grow faster than we could cross things off.

But the Lord continued to provide through ordinary means.

Friends helped. Our church cared for us. People prayed. Supporters encouraged us. Needs were met. We made decisions one at a time.

We did not execute the final weeks perfectly.

We simply kept finding that the Lord gave enough grace for the next thing in front of us.

At the very end of July, we made one more significant trip before our departure overseas: time with Fordham Community Church in the Bronx, one of our Immanuel Network partners.

There was something fitting about ending this long season of travel with another local church.

For months, the Lord had taken us from church to church and home to home, allowing us to share the burden for Tokyo and inviting saints into the work through prayer, encouragement, giving, and friendship.

Our time with Fordham reminded us that missionary sending belongs to churches.

We are deeply grateful for brothers and sisters who have received us, listened patiently, prayed seriously, and reminded us that when we eventually arrive in Japan, we will not arrive alone.

We will carry the prayers and partnership of churches with us.

And that brings us to where we are writing from today.

We made it to WEST ASIA.

After years of praying, preparing, applying, raising support, traveling, and waiting, our family is now living overseas.

WEST ASIA is not our final destination. Lord willing, Tokyo still lies ahead.

But this is an important part of the road.

The months ahead will be a season of intensive training, cross-cultural adjustment, learning, and preparation for the long-term work we hope to do in Japan.

Right now, we are doing very ordinary things: setting up an apartment, learning transportation, figuring out utilities, finding groceries, adjusting our sleep, learning our neighborhood, beginning new rhythms, and helping Judah understand that this new place is home for a season. We just have to do all of it in the local language

And strangely enough, those ordinary things have made the theology at the beginning of this newsletter feel less abstract.

We have needs everywhere we look.

And we are learning again that God does not.

A snapshot for our partners:

Every partner — whether you give $25/month or $500/month, whether you pray daily or join us on Discord — is part of this. We are grateful to our Lord for these significant partnerships

As we settle into life in West Asia, we would be grateful for your prayers in these specific ways:

I write this letter to you with tired eyes, a worn body, but a hopeful heart. 

With fresh perspective, I was reminded of 2 Corinthians 12:19

This has become my prayer. Lord, please help me to boast in my weakness. Lord, please let the power of Christ rest in me. And most of all, Lord, please help me to know and trust that your grace is sufficient for me and that your power is made perfect in weakness. 

This is our first week doing culture and language acquisition training in West Asia. This is also the first week we, as a family, are living cross-culturally together, and because of that, we are feeling deep pockets of sin that we otherwise may not have noticed in a different context. 

In one word, we are feeling WEAK.

Allow me to take you back to our first day to illustrate our weakness and His strength. 

We arrived in West Asia on a Friday evening, and after going through customs and getting our new eSIMs, we were promptly taken to our new apartment, the place we will call home for the next eight months. We walked through unfamiliar hallways and became disoriented by the plates and cups not being where they had been for the past 9 years.

As I looked down from our balcony, I saw city lights, cars and buses passing by, and a bright red neon sign saying “Coca Cola”. It had been a long day of hard parenting on a long flight. There were several times I had to ask Judah for forgiveness. We slept to the best of our ability when jet lag came knocking at our door, specifically Judah’s door.

At 2 am, he let me know that he was done sleeping, and so we watched the sun rise together. What the night concealed was revealed in the early morning, and that was the mountains and hills resting behind the busyness of the city. It was a sweet reminder of Psalm 121:

All it takes is one night of no sleep to dismantle us.

But the Lord does not sleep.

He does not grow tired.

He does not become impatient from exhaustion.

He does not wake up depleted.

He keeps His people.

So in this first week, I am already learning something I suspect the Lord will teach us many more times over the coming months:

We are weaker than we think.

And God is more sufficient than we know.

I am thankful that the Lord who neither sleeps nor slumbers is the One who sustains us.

- Hudson Taylor

Missionary to China, founder of China Inland Mission

1832-1905

Under His Lordship,

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”

Kris: (904)729-9665 - [email protected]

Linh: (904)882-7513 - [email protected]

If you’d like more timely prayer requests, personal updates, and a closer look at our family’s journey toward Tokyo, we’d love to have you join our KOINOBORI Discord community.

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