Winter Update 2026 — The Carters and Our Quick Trip to the States
“Boast not thyself of tomorrow; For thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” – Prov 27:1
What a blur these last few months have been. Even as I finish this draft, our family is just hours away from boarding our flight back to Japan. By the time you read this, we may already be there.
Our Missionary Partners — Tough News
Right after sending out our last newsletter in November, we wondered if we would still be taking our Spring furlough to the States in 2026. As most of you have heard, our missionary partners, the Carter family, have temporarily relocated to the States. Just before Thanksgiving we received the shocking news that Bethany Carter’s cancer had returned. And the prognosis wasn’t looking good. I’ll give you the link where you can read more about the details on that—and I would encourage you to give to their GoFundMe if you can. ( Click Here for GoFundMe Link )
Not only did the Lord allow the Carters to quickly secure a specific treatment option for Bethany’s cancer back in the States, they found this medical care in the same town where our home church is located, Louisville, Kentucky. They left within weeks of finding out the news. And we were in Japan alone.
I’ll say this now to deal with any misunderstandings. We remain committed, long-term missionaries to Japan. Even now as we are wrapping up our furlough, we are looking forward to getting back there to our home. Our plans for ministering in Japan over the next few decades were not ultimately jeopardized by the tragic events of last fall.
But our plans for the next couple of years had become a bit unclear at one point. We were wondering, “How is our daily life going to be affected here in Japan without our missionary partners here?” Also, “How will our relationship with the Japanese Church be affected in their absence?” “What does it mean to be here when they are not for the long-term?” And, “Are we still taking our furlough to the U.S. in January?”
Well, we were ready to postpone our Jan-April trip if that’s what we needed to do. And for a while we were intending to do just that. As the Holidays came and went, the Carters left and got settled into their new, temporary situation in America. Ultimately, we were given permission to proceed with our furlough as planned. On January 13th we hopped on a few planes and came back here to the U.S.
Our First Furlough — Jam Packed
We left our house in Tokyo at noon and headed for the airport. Twenty hours later, we arrived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at 6:00 PM the same day—only six hours according to the calendar! Funny how that works when traveling east.
After a bit of jet-lag, the calendar began filling quickly. There was much to get done. We spent approximately six weeks in Oklahoma, four in Kentucky, and one more back in Oklahoma. In total, we visited 9 states on this trip. I was able to get away to a conference in Florida for a few days, and we had the privilege to go up to New York state for a weekend and give updates to two dear, supporting churches.
The plan was always to have a busy trip. And a busy trip we had. In all, we visited 21 churches, I had 14 pastor meetups, I got to speak to children and teens 5 times, and we only had 1 injury—Sierah fractured her wrist after a slip on the stairs a couple weeks ago. Our trip has ended with a missions emphasis Sunday at our home church in Louisville, followed by a four-day missions conference at Sierah’s childhood church in Ponca City, Oklahoma. It was a sweet end to a jam-packed trip.
We set out to achieve a few specific goals on this first furlough, and God allowed us to succeed in many of them. But no amount of goal-hitting makes a trip like this “successful” without all the time we got to spend with people we love. I was going back through my calendar trying to count the meals and meetups shared with family and friends… But I couldn’t. There was something nearly every day and sometimes multiple meetings a day.
So many of you we got to see again. Some of you we had the privilege of meeting for the first time, and many of you we sadly didn’t get to see this time around.
Conclusion
So much has happened over the last few months that I haven’t mentioned. And there is much to come in the months ahead. Be in prayer for us as we return to the field. Be in prayer for us as we return to the field. We face a few challenges in the immediate future. But the largest challenge is and will continue to be learning the Japanese language.
Japanese Language Fact:
There are three alphabets in Japanese. Two of them are like our alphabet. And they both contain the exact same letters, but they are written in different scripts. Think kind of like how we have a cursive script in English, right? The third alphabet contains thousands of picture-characters that the Japanese borrowed from Chinese a long time ago. These characters are called “Kanji,” and have many different pronunciations. Many sentences in Japanese will contain letters and characters from all three alphabets!
