In 1998, Yuko Satomichi came to our daughter’s home through the Nova Academy program before we even knew that OMS existed. Her heart was irretrievably knit with ours from the beginning. We knew from our relationship with Yuko and from what our daughter told us about other Nova Academy students, that the Japanese people seemed to know little about God, Jesus or the Bible.

When the Lord interrupted my sleep one night in 2001 and prompted me to read Missionary Warrior, Lettie Cowman’s account of how God called her and her husband, Charles, to Japan exactly 100 years earlier, the stage had already been set. I wondered why less than 1 percent of the Japanese people had found Jesus after the Cowman’s wonderful beginning there.

Later, I discovered that there was a short-term OMS mission trip to Japan in August of that year. My husband, Donn, and I applied and were accepted. Yuko was overjoyed to learn that we were coming to Japan and insisted that we must visit her and her family. Donn’s schedule didn’t allow him to visit, but I spent almost a week with Yuko and her family in Nara.

Our family had been sharing Jesus with Yuko at every opportunity, and on the last day of my stay in Nara, I shared the Gospel with her again. I also told her the parable of the good shepherd going out to look for his one lost sheep. I explained that I thought she was like that one lost sheep and that God had loved her enough to bring us together from across the ocean so that we could tell her about Jesus.

Yuko wasn’t ready to receive Christ yet, but she loved the parable of the lost sheep. We got an email from her the following year that said she wanted to come to America for two weeks to improve her English and learn more about God. The week before she arrived, as I was cleaning in preparation for her stay, I found a page from a devotional guide under a chest.

The key scripture was, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost” (Luke 15:6). I wept as I read it because I felt that God was saying that during this visit, our precious Yuko was going to be saved. And she was. When she arrived, we had Bible study together each day using her Japanese/English Bible. On the last day, she prayed to receive Jesus. Our daughter then spent time the following week, studying the Bible with Yuko each day and discipling and teaching her the basics of the Christian faith.

Clinging to Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans that I have for you, plans not for evil but for good to give you a future and a hope,” Yuko found the courage to overcome her low self-esteem and took the steps to become an international tour guide. Last year, she served as a guide for a Men for Missions International prayer team that I participated in to the city where Yuko lives. Our Good Shepherd truly has found His sheep that was lost!