I, Adrian Solis, was born and raised in Amarillo, Texas. My life forever changed when I moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico. There, a Seventh-day Adventist traveling evangelist conducted a Bible prophecy seminar when I was 19. For the first time, I fully heard the gospel of Jesus and the three angels’ messages. At the end of the seminar, I was baptized into the Adventist church, and God soon laid the ministry upon my heart. I then attended Southwestern Adventist University and began serving as a missionary in Japan in 2009.

My wife Sumako was born and raised in Okinawa, Japan, to a Buddhist family who knew nothing about Jesus. At 20, a major life crisis led her to an Adventist church. God showed Sumako the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ, and she accepted Him as her personal Savior.

While we were both living in Japan, God introduced us to each other and we were married in 2013. We then moved to Texas, where I had accepted a call to pastoral ministry. However, God deeply impressed us that one day, not knowing how or when, we would return to the mission field of Japan.

Sumako began her journey through the Adventist college system and beyond before we met, earning degrees in Education and Mental Health. Since then, God has led her to serve others as a teacher, mental health counselor, partner in pastoral ministry and mother. God blessed us with two wonderful boys, Michael, 8, and Caden, 7, whom we adopted in 2020.

After I completed a Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry from Andrew’s University in 2020, I began praying and contemplating our family’s return to Japan as church planters and missionaries.

Also that year, a missionary program on 3ABN caught my attention. As I watched the show about an American family who had gone to Asia to plant a church, I felt a deep conviction: That’s what God wants us to do in Japan!

With excitement, I went home to tell Sumako that I believed God wanted us to church plant in Japan. She didn’t share my enthusiasm and began asking how this would work and how we would earn a living. I didn’t have answers, and the conversation didn’t end well. Sumako was not convinced this idea was from God.
I prayed that God would make it clear to both Sumako and me that if God wanted us to be church-planting missionaries in Japan, He would give her that conviction. That Sabbath, she approached me after church. “I have to show you something,” she said, giving me a recent edition of Mission 360 Magazine containing an article about a church-planting project in Tokyo, Japan. “My heart burned inside me as I read the article,” she said.

After much prayer and fasting, our entire family strongly felt the call of God with the conviction that now was the time to labor as disciple-makers in the mission field of Japan. Through a series of events, God led us to Adventist Frontier Missions, where we will train to reach the unreached people of Japan with the message of Jesus Christ and to start a church-planting movement.

After pastoring for 13 years, I am excited about this ministry transition. Since Sumako is Japanese and understands what it is like to know nothing of Jesus and the Bible, and then accept and believe both, she can truly help our family reach her people for Christ. We also see how God is also calling our two young boys to be missionaries.

Please prayerfully consider joining the Japan project as a monthly supporter and prayer warrior.

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