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 verse. We could never have imagined just how literally this verse would come true in our lives.

Ever since our youth, we have both shared a deep love for Japan and a fascination with the people and culture of this wonderful country. We met at the University of Bayreuth, where we were both studying mathematics, and got 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. Julian took part in the preaching and was responsible for the technical equipment, while Karolina helped with simultaneous translation of the services from German into Russian and led a women’s group. We had our own house in Bayreuth, and things could have gone on like that forever—but then came…

Our Calling to God

In early 2017, we both realized that our daily lives didn’t really look like how the Bible described the new life in Christ. After years of walking with Jesus together, we found ourselves on what felt like a constantly repeating roller coaster ride. There were times when we were soaring high and life with Jesus was exciting and fascinating, but there were also other times when we were back on a downward spiral, and other things seemed more interesting and took over our lives.

We decided that we couldn’t go on like this, with these constant ups and downs. The way we had lived as Christians during our first seven years of marriage clearly wasn’t bearing the promised fruit. We longed for more consistency and depth in our walk and relationship with Jesus.

So, we set out to find sermons and testimonies that touched on that topic, and we found the “Pineapple Story” by Otto Koning. He worked as a missionary among the indigenous people in the jungles of New Guinea. In his talk, he spoke very openly about how his clinging to his possessions and his own plans led to one failure after another, and how he was unable to reach the people with the Good News. After several years, when he was at the end of his strength and felt like a complete failure as a missionary, 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.”

Otto Koning wanted to follow Jesus as his disciple. And so, he realized that this was possible only by giving up all his own efforts and methods, as well as everything he thought he had a right to. Deeply moved by Jesus’ words, he renounced everything he had and left it up to God to decide freely over his life and his ministry. As soon as he had done this, God began to intervene powerfully, and many of the indigenous people recognized God’s work and understood that He 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, too, wanted to be true disciples of Jesus. And so, that very evening we renounced everything and in prayer surrendered our house, possessions, time, money, work, future, reputation, and preferences to Jesus. From then on, He was to have free rein over all these things and our entire lives and take the lead. We placed everything in his hands, because he is much better at taking care of everything and handle the responsibility for our lives anyway.

As soon as we had done that and were eagerly waiting to see what God would do with our lives, we experienced one miracle after another in a short time. Julian was having major problems with his doctoral thesis at the time. Although he had been working on it for several years, he still didn’t understand the mathematical foundations of his topic. Year after year, his worries about his professional future grew, and the emotional burden he carried became heavier. But after he had completely surrendered his dissertation to Jesus, and decided to leave it entirely up to Him whether the thesis would be completed and what would become of his professional career, he experienced Jesus taking 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, enabling him to complete all the research for his dissertation within just one year.

Karolina, too, experienced incredible things at her job after she made Jesus her boss. We realized that Jesus has resources and ways that far exceed our own capabilities. For example, Karolina was saved at the very last moment from the failure of an important project and was supplied by God with inexplicable strength and energy to save the project before the deadline.

Our Calling into Missions

Three months after we had surrendered everything to God, He took us to the next step. Because we found Otto Konings’ jungle adventures with God so exciting and spiritually refreshing, we continued to listen to his sermons and talks. In one of these talks 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 in the face of adversity, resistance to Satan and his schemes, as well as love and mercy toward 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” written in blazing letters before her eyes and heard Jesus say that the two of us should go to Japan as missionaries. Although Julian hadn’t seen or heard anything, he suddenly felt a deep peace in his heart and said without giving it much thought, “If that’s what Jesus wants, then we’ll go.” We both knew that Jesus had just unmistakably called us to mission work in Japan. Because we were already adjusted to the fact that Jesus was now the absolute Lord of our lives—and had experienced so many confirmations in the past few months—it wasn’t actually that hard for us to follow this call. We immediately began praying that Jesus would show us the next steps—partly because we had no idea how to even become missionaries.