Tak and Lana Oue

Lana Oue was an expectant mother when she and her husband Tak, who is Japanese by birth but grew up in Kentucky, sailed for two weeks to reach Japan. During their journey, Lana repeatedly quoted Isaiah 26:3 to help calm her nerves — and her stomach.

DECADES OF SERVICE
1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s

MINISTRY EMPHASIS
Evangelism & Church Planting, Mercy Ministry

Lana Oue was an expectant mother when she and her husband Tak, who is Japanese by birth but grew up in Kentucky, sailed for two weeks to reach Japan. During their journey, Lana repeatedly quoted Isaiah 26:3 to help calm her nerves — and her stomach.

The verse describes the peace Christ gives to those who trust Him. “In the ensuing years,” Lana said at her retirement recognition in 2015, “when facing death, challenges, fears or disappointments, this verse brought me back to focus on Christ, which led to peace, joy and victory.”

After language school, the couple served in various missionary roles throughout Japan, and they learned how resistant the Japanese could be to the gospel. Then the 2011 magnitude-9.0 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear meltdown killed nearly 20,000 people and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands more. Tak and Lana, by this time veteran missionaries, oversaw Southern Baptist relief work in some of the areas most affected by the disasters. It was, in Tak’s words, “a triple disaster that literally shook Japan from its foundation.”

As a result of the relief provided by Southern Baptist volunteers from across the United States, the typically reserved Japanese invited Tak and Lana and the volunteers into their homes and shared their lives. Some were “even open to us praying with them and reading the Bible,” Tak said. This northeast area of Japan that suffered the most damage from the disaster had been resistant to the gospel for centuries. “This might seem small to some,” Tak said at the time. “But it’s a start.”