Hello! We are Joel and Seiko Lovestrand and we serve as missionaries in Sendai, Japan with OMF International. Our aim is to bring the gospel to the Japanese, teach them to love Jesus Christ, and build up the Japanese church. Our hope is that just as Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun, belongs to Jesus Christ by virtue of his creating it, his redeeming those who believe in him, and his resurrection from the dead, so even now it will visibly become the Land of the Risen Son as the people of Japan joyfully embrace him as their Lord, Savior, and coming King.

Sendai is a city of about one million people located on the Pacific coast of the island of Honshu in Japan, approximately halfway between Tokyo and the northern tip of the island. Many people in America have heard of Sendai in connection with the tsunami of 2011. The epicenter of that earthquake was off the coast of Sendai and the tsunami brought terrible destruction to the whole coastline of that region. From 2007 until a few months after the earthquake of 2011 we served in Sendai Evangelical Christian Church on the southern edge of the city. Since February of 2014 we have been assigned to lead the Izumi Park Town Christian Church in the northern part of Sendai. Our goal is to help this church reach a state of healthy independence.