Murphy, Marianne
Marianne Murphy
Church planter in Japan
Do you know the Japanese constitute the world’s largest unreached people group? With “eight million gods,” including those of money, atheism, peer pressure and ancestor worship and only 0.4 percent of the more than 122 million population following Jesus, the challenge is immense. But God is at work!
From the time Marianne went on a short-term mission trip to Japan in 1979, she has seen how the Japanese people need God’s love, grace and forgiveness. She responded to his call on her life during that summer by returning in 1984 with OMF International as a career missionary. More than twenty years later she is as convinced as ever that the Japanese people need Jesus and of the difference he makes in their lives. The Lord wants to build a vibrant, outreaching church, and we can be involved, especially through prayer.
Before joining OMF, Marianne studied at Western Washington University, Prairie Bible Institute and Missionary Internship. She spent her first two years on the field studying at the OMF language center, and then went on to a church-planting ministry in Asahikawa and later Sapporo. She has been involved with multinational church-planting teams ever since. After serving 12 years in Sapporo, Marianne has said her farewells and will begin her next phase of ministry in Otofuke, a town of 45,000 four hours to the east.