Sayaka was born and raised in Japan, and came to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale as an unsaved undergraduate international student.

After 4 years of attending the Japanese Bible Study in SIUC Chi Alpha Campus Ministries, she got radically saved and discipled through Chi Alpha. She became a full-time pastor in 2011 to serve in SIUC Chi Alpha and Calvary Campus Church in Carbondale IL, but she sensed God’s call and burden for her to serve her own people in Japan for this next season, because there are still so many who, like Sayaka in the past, have never heard the Gospel nor met even one Japanese Christian witness in Japan.

Aside from her passion to see people changed by the power of the Gospel and the nations worship Jesus, she loves sports, food, and travel!