We had the privilege of having Emily host The Relentless Pursuit Podcast for the last two seasons. She and her husband have joined a multi-ethnic church planting effort in Kansas, so she is passing the baton to our new hosts Jess and Matt.
We had the privilege of having Emily host the Relentless Pursuit Podcast for the last two seasons. She and her husband have joined a multi-ethnic church planting effort in Kansas, so she is passing the baton to our new hosts, Jess and Matt.
Jess was a missionary for seven years in Japan and now works at the Pioneers-USA base, where she helps people do partnership development (see what this means in Episode 11 of Season 2). Matt leads the Marketing team for Pioneers-USA and has had a wealth of travel experience and interaction with missionaries on the field.
Jess told her story when she was a guest on Relentless Pursuit. Check it out to hear more about how she went from a short-term trip in Guatemala to being a long-term missionary in Japan.
Ready to take the next step, but not sure what it looks like? Schedule a call with our team or chat today.
Emily (00:02):
Hey everyone. Welcome back to season three. It's been a minute, but we are back and excited for these new episodes. I have a bit of an announcement for you all. So my husband and I have moved to Kansas to participate in a multi-ethnic church plant there. So I am thrilled to pass the baton off to two people who I think are far more qualified and probably a lot more interesting to host this podcast. And so we're going to take some time to introduce them. I want you all to get to know a bit more about their story and what has some interest in hosting this podcast. So actually one of them is not here today. He is a bit under the weather. So I'm going to introduce you to Jess. She's here with us today and I can't wait for y'all to meet her and hear more about her story. Jess, welcome.
Jess (00:52):
Hi. Thanks for welcoming me on. Oh
Emily (00:55):
My gosh, of
Emily (00:55):
Course. Good to be here with y'all. With you.
Emily (00:57):
Oh, I'm so excited for y'all to take over. This is going to be so, so sweet. I dunno if y'all remember, but Jess was actually a guest in season one of the podcast. Y'all can go back and if you want to hear more about her experiences, but Jess, tell us a little bit about your story and kind of your involvement here with what we've got going on.
Jess (01:18):
Yeah, so I can't believe that was season one. It seems like so long ago now. We're ago now, we're already in season three, but I was with pioneers in Japan for about seven years. While I was there, I worked with a church planting team that was partnered with local Japanese pastors and just had really such a wonderful experience and was just so blessed to be able to work alongside Japanese believers and just sharing the gospel with those who really just had no idea who Jesus was or what the Bible was or anything. So yeah, just really, really enjoyed my time in Japan. While I was there, I also started dating another pioneer's missionary who eventually became my husband. So we came back to the US to get married and meet each other's churches and all of that. And then Covid happened and we had some health issues come up and basically life was like, you're not going back to Japan, which made us very, very sad.
Jess (02:16):
But thankfully, and just by the grace of God, we were able to find a wonderful position at Pioneer's home office. And now we help with the pre-field team, which is sort of the onboarding team, and we help them with support raising. So anybody who's coming through, we help them in what we call partnership development. And actually that's been a true blessing and we enjoy it so much. So yeah, we just love being here, part of the team in Orlando, Florida, and just also love that we get cool opportunities like this to do podcasts and interview missionaries. So yeah, I'm just really excited about this season.
Emily (02:54):
We all are the coolest. When I was living there, you guys were so fun to hang out with because you had so many encouraging stories that would just naturally come up. And I think something that's interesting about Pioneers is that a lot of us have more exposure to storytelling just by the nature of our work. And so I think for you and your husband and now even Matt coming onto this podcast, it'll be fun to hear how all of your gifts will be used to be able to draw out our field workers and their stories. And so I think your perfect fit, and Matt is actually, he leads our marketing team at Pioneer. So he has a lot of interesting exposure to being able to hear people's stories, to capture them so that we can share them with all the people who want to learn more about pioneers or just be more involved. So I think you're going to have a lot of fun hosting this podcast together. I'm so excited for y'all.
Jess (03:47):
Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, even though Matt wasn't directly on the field as a worker, he's had so much exposure to so many people traveled and visited so many different places as you'll hear about after this as well. And so I think he brings just such an awesome perspective to everyone's stories and has awesome questions. And that's basically what we do. We just hang out with missionaries and ask them their questions about their life and their ministry. What is God doing in them and around them. So yeah, we've got our first episode dropping soon, if not already. And so to see you there, check it out.
