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Van Dam
Terence and Christy Snowden Van Dam
Special Assignment Missionaries to Japan
Missions Focus:
- Supporting the ministry of Sei-ai Gakusha (a collection of Christian preschools/community education centers) and serving with Nishi-Kunitachi Church of God.
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Birthdays: Anniversary
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Christy felt called to full time ministry during her junior year of high school. She enrolled in Anderson University, where her first missions experience was through a Tri-S trip. It was then that the seeds of full time missionary work were planted. She tested herself by spending her last semester of college volunteering at a home for handicapped individuals in Hong Kong. After returning, the call to missions was still strong, and in 1992 Christy found herself at the Church of God Missionary Board, trusting that God would send her where she needed to be. This turned out to be Japan, where she served as a Special Assignment Missionary, teaching English in a high school and working with a Church of God congregation.
Terence grew up in a Christian home in Western Canada. At a missions' festival in his first year of college, he came forward during a call for people who wanted to commit themselves to go into missions, but the decision remained quietly in the back of his mind for some time. After graduating in 1993, he went to Japan to teach English where he met Christy on the assignment. They married in 1996. The following year they returned to the United States where Christy attended Anderson School of Theology. Willem was born shortly after Christy graduated. They returned to Japan as SAMS from 2000 – 2003, where they had a teaching ministry in Western Tokyo to preschoolers' age through adults. In addition, they helped support a local Church of God congregation. Their second son, Tai, was born in Japan in 2002. In 2003, they returned to the US where Christy directed a child care center and they both served as lay leaders in Southwest Ohio. In 2006, Xavier was born, and the family moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where Christy served in full time ministry as a pastor at Riverchase Community Church. In 2009, they returned to Japan for nine weeks, working in their previous positions in western Tokyo. After that experience they could no longer deny that God had more work for them to do in Japan. They are excited to return to Japan and work with the Japanese people again. |
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