Joel and Seiko Lovestrand

Missionaries to Japan

Joel and Seiko Lovestrand have a desire to reach the Japanese with the hope of the gospel just as God used the faithful lives and witness of his people to reach Seiko. Seiko was raised in a non-Christian home in Japan. As a child, her only contact with the church was a Sunday school class she attended. After finishing college and beginning work as a veterinarian, stress and interpersonal difficulties on the job revealed the sinfulness of her own heart to her. She began to seek God's help by attending worship at a church being started by OMF missionaries. On her first Sunday at that church a Korean missionary approached and told her that since it was his first Sunday there he had prayed that he would meet another newcomer and that that person would one day become a missionary! At that time Seiko had no intention of even becoming a Christian, but as she studied the Bible God revealed himself to her and she came to believe in Jesus as her Savior.

Joel was raised in a Christian home and believed in Jesus while he was still very young. Although he grew up mainly in the United States, his parents spent a number of years working in Southeast Asia as missionaries, so Joel had the opportunity to see missionary life first hand. However, it wasn't until his first year at St. Paul Bible College when he took an introductory course on missions that God opened his eyes to the spiritual needs that remained in various parts of the world. After graduating from college he enrolled in Trinity Evangelical Divinity School where he completed a Master of Divinity course with the intention of serving overseas as a church planter.

Through the process of applying to OMF, Joel was led to work in Japan. From 1992 to 1993 he worked in OMF's Serve Asia program, teaching English in churches in Japan. In 1994 he returned to Japan with OMF to do church planting. While he was still in language school in the city of Sapporo, he was asked to take a few months off his language study to fill in as an English teacher in a church in Yokohama. This was the church Seiko had just begun attending. After returning to Sapporo and finishing language school, Joel spent the next year and a half working in Sapporo on a church-planting team with a Chinese missionary couple from Hong Kong.

After Joel completed his first term of missionary service in Japan, he and Seiko came to the United States and were married. Seiko began studying English so she could enter an American Bible college or seminary. In 2000 she enrolled at Columbia International University in Columbia, South Carolina. Many hours of study and one baby later, she received her Certificate of Biblical Studies.

Since 2007 they have been involved in a church-planting ministry in Sendai, a city of a million people on the northeast coast of Japan.

They have one daughter, Akari.