But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!
Joshua 24:15

Hi, we are Julian and Karolina Tenzler from Bayreuth, Germany. This Bible verse was given to us by Julian’s grandfather, who was a Protestant pastor in Bayreuth and who married us in 2010, as our wedding motto. We could not have imagined how literally this verse has been fulfilled in our lives.

Since our youth, we both have had a great love for Japan and a fascination for the people and the culture of this wonderful country. We met at the University of Bayreuth, where we both studied mathematics, and married shortly thereafter.

After graduating with a double degree in mathematics and business administration, Karolina started working for an electricity grid operator. Julian began his doctoral thesis in mathematics and taught various courses at the university.

During this time, we were actively involved in our local church, the Bibelgemeinde Bayreuth. Julian was involved in preaching and leading youth groups, and he was responsible for the technical equipment, while Karolina helped to translate the services simultaneously between German and Russian and led a women’s group. We had our own house in Bayreuth and it could have gone on like this forever, but then came…

Our Calling to God

At the beginning of 2017, we both realized that our lives did not really look like the abundant life we read about in the New Testament. Sometimes life with Jesus was super exciting and interesting. But there were also times when it felt boring and we preferred to occupy ourselves with other things. But this time we decided that it is enough and we could no longer go on with this constant up and down. We longed for more consistency and depth in our walk with Jesus.

So, we searched the internet for sermons and testimonies that touched on that topic, and we found the lecture “Pineapple Story” by Otto Koning. He worked as a missionary among the natives in the jungles of New Guinea. In his talk, he openly shared how his clinging to his possessions and his own plans brought him one failure after another. After several years, when he was at the end of his strength, God reminded him of Jesus’ words in Luke 14:33:

“So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

Deeply touched, he renounced everything he had and left it to God to decide freely about his life and ministry. As soon as he did this, God began to intervene powerfully and many of the natives recognized that God is the true Lord.

This testimony spoke to us in a very special way and we knew deep in our hearts that this was the answer to our search. We wanted to be true disciples of Jesus. And so that same evening, in prayer, we renounced everything and put our house, possessions, time, money, work, future, reputation and preferences under Jesus’ rule and responsibility. We gave everything into his hands because he is much better at taking care of everything anyway.

As soon as we had done that and were waiting to see what God would do with our lives, we experienced one miracle after another. At the time, Julian was having major problems with his doctoral thesis. Although he had been working on it for several years, he still did not understand the mathematical foundations of his topic. After he had also completely surrendered his doctoral thesis to Jesus and left it to Him whether he would ever be able to finish this work and what would become of his professional future, he experienced how Jesus took the helm. Step by step, as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes, things became clearer to him and he made rapid progress, so that within a year he was able to finish the entire research work. Karolina also experienced incredible things at work after she had surrendered it all to God.

Our Calling into Missions

Three months after we had committed everything to God, He took the next step with us. We were listening to another sermon by Otto Koning because we found his jungle adventures with God so exciting and spiritually refreshing. He spoke about 2 Corinthians 10:4:

“For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.”

And he gave several examples of such spiritual weapons that he had identified in his ministry. These included persistent prayer, joy despite adverse circumstances, resistance to Satan and his machinations, and love and mercy for one’s enemies. At the end of the sermon, he said, “We have all these “weapons” to win people. We can go to any country and plant churches there with what God has given us.”

At that moment, Karolina paused the video and said that she had just seen the word “Japan” in burning letters and heard Jesus say that we should go to Japan as missionaries. Julian hadn’t seen or heard anything, but when he heard this, he felt a deep peace in his heart and said, “If that’s what Jesus wants, then we’ll go.” We immediately began to pray that Jesus would take the lead in this matter and show us the next steps.