Dick and Gloria Durston

Candidate Coordinator

Dick and Gloria Durston were appointed as Candidate Coordinators for OMF-U.S in 2005. They also minister to the Japanese students and business people in the United States and Dick coordinates the U.S. Ethnic Ministries program for OMF.

Dick was raised in a non-Christian home near Los Angeles and majored in music at a state university. Gloria, a farmer's daughter from Wyoming, was raised with Baptist influence and attended Biola College as a nursing major. Though they come from diverse backgrounds, the Lord sovereignly brought them together to serve His church in Japan.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Hudson Taylor's biography influenced Dick toward involvement in corss-cultural ministry. Gloria was convinced at age 12 that she wanted to become a missionary and was influenced by the lives of missionaries who stayed in her home when her father was a representative for Wycliffe Bible Translators.

After their marriage in 1980, Dick and Gloria moved from California to Colorado to attend Denver Seminary. The major blessing of this move was finding South Fellowship, and for the next three years Dick worked alongside the staff, discipling men, teaching Sunday school and leading a fellowship group in their home. Emily and Lindsay were born during this time. Their third daughter, Heather, was born in Japan.

Following seminary, the Durstons spent four years with OMF in Japan as part of a church-planting team in the city of Hatazawa, a southern suburb of Tokyo.

Originally held back from returning to Japan because of medical problems, Dick and Gloria were surprised and thrilled to see many Japanese in Denver turn to Christ. Japanese are much more open to the gospel when separated from their homeland. The Durstons are involved in the only evangelical Japanese church in Colorado, which they helped start in 1991. They are also active in the placement of new Christians into the Japanese church when these believers return to Japan.