Interview With RAM's Voice/Aroma Ministries : Insight & Advice For Japanese Christian Evangelism ⋆ Chromatic Dreamers

Hello Everyone! I got another amazing interview for you today. After publishing my Ultimate List of Japanese Christian Artists article, and shared it in the Reaching Japanese for Christ Network Facebook group, Marla from this amazing duo group asked to be added to the list. After checking out some of their stuff, I knew they would be an amazing group to learn more about not just music production, but missionary work in Japan, and they agreed to do an interview with me ^_^

According to their website, Rocky spent a couple of years working for JICA after graduation from business college. Then he felt called to serve Jesus full time. He began doing ministry in various ways, one of which was assisting local missionaries with music and translation. In 1997 Marla arrived in Kitakyushu as one of those missionaries and they met!

At Marla’s first Tuesday night Bible study fellowship, she notice some Justin Roper cowboy boots by the doorway and wondered who they belong to. “Inside, the Bible study had already begun and there across the room sat a young man translating for someone sharing a testimony. He spoke English with a Texas accent!! After the Bible study, he stood and removed his guitar. He was wearing worn and faded Wrangler jeans, and a huge western belt buckle. I was then introduced to one Mr. Rocky Ayatsuka.”

Over the next year and a half of fun and friendship with the Tuesday night Bible study and times of ministering together in many ways, Rocky and Marla formed a wonderful friendship. Then in January of 1999 friendship turned to love! They were married in March of 2000.

Soon after they began to desire an addition to the little family. Four long years of prayer and struggle later, the Lord led Rocky and Marla to the path of adoption! They prayed for a way to make that possible in Japan where adoption is rare, and through a Christian Japanese organization God made it possible for the Ayatsukas to bring two precious infants into their home, Hana and Kai.

The couple has gone on to release successful CDs and have performed in various concerts across Japan. They have planted churches, host summer and dance camps, and have an active Youtube channel where they cover Christian songs, host bible lessons, create content for Japanese children and much more!

All in all, I know their story, experience, and knowledge will be wonderful for anyone interested in sharing the gospel in Japan or to Japanese people, so without further ado, here is my interview with mainly Marla from the Rock & Marla Show aka RAM’s Voice aka Aroma Ministries.

INTRO / HISTORY

1. Please introduce yourself and your brand/platform/music!

We are Rocky and Marla Ayatsuka, missionaries and church planters in Kyushu. We’ve been married since 2000. Rocky was born and raised in Japan and Marla is a native of Texas. Since we married we have been doing music evangelism as a part of our ministry. Rocky is a gifted guitarist and songwriter, raised in a musical family. Marla has always loved singing and praise music. We have put out 3 albums and several singles. Rocky is also gifted in translating praise songs.

2. How did you get into music or when did you start playing instruments?

Rocky began by learning classical guitar at the age of 9. He took lessons for 3 years and then when his guitar teacher stopped teaching Rocky began to learn by ear on his own. He was raised doing Bluegrass Gospel music with his family, the Ayatsuka Family Band. He also went through a phase of loving hard rock music and his youth group at church formed a hard rock band.

Marla was raised in a small town in West Texas and loved singing in the choir from childhood. She often sang special music on Sunday morning, participated in choirs and musicals, and competed in talent shows whenever possible. During her time in University she served on the church praise team and at the BSM on campus.

3. Who are some of your favourite artists or sources of inspiration? (Christian or non-Christian)

Rocky’s favorite artists and inspirations include Phil Keaggy, Stephen Curtis Chapman, and various mainstream Bluegrass artists. His music interests range from country and bluegrass to hard rock, and contemporary praise to traditional hymns, and everything in between. He loves so many different genres of music.

Marla, being born in a small West Texas town grew up on country music and gospel hymns. Her favorite artists and inspirations include Reba McEntire, her sister a Gospel singer Suzie McEntire Luchsinger, Amy Grant, Choice Worship, Chris Tomlin, Point of Grace, Matt Redman, Passion Music, Keith and Kristyn Getty, City Alight, Sovereign Grace Music, and Laura Story.

4. Please share your Christian testimony with us. Why did you start a ministry?

Rocky was working in a secular environment while also helping missionaries occasionally with translation and worship leading after he finished vocational college majoring in English. After 3 years of working he began to realize he wanted to use all of his life and his time to serve the Lord and spread the Gospel through music and in whatever way the Lord would allow him to do ministry. He quite his job and began full time ministry in 1994.

Marla went through an incredible faith transformation through the loss of her father to Lou Gehrig’s disease while at Texas A&M University. During her senior year and after the loss of her dad she realized that without a relationship with Jesus and the fullness that comes from him, life isn’t worthwhile. At a conference called Passion ‘97 the Lord made clear his calling on her life to missions and just 6 months later she graduated and came to Japan as a short term missionary.

Marla came in 1997 to serve in the same town Rocky is from and there they met as he was often translating for missionaries and leading worship for Bible studies. Within a year and a half they realized they wanted to do ministry together for the rest of their lives! They married in 2000.

5. What inspired you to start evangelizing through music?

Before we married, Rocky was already doing a lot of music evangelism. He grew up doing bluegrass gospel with his family band, and it had just been a natural part of his life growing up in church. Since Marla also grew up singing in church it was natural that they would continue to do a lot of music in their ministry efforts as a married couple.

MAKING JAPANESE CHRISTIAN MUSIC

6. What were your initial thoughts and feelings when you considered making Japanese Christian music? Did you expect people to pay attention or listen to it?

Since Rocky had been a part of the family band growing up doing music in many churches, it wasn’t new to him. However, he was challenged by another Christian artist to try writing his own songs in a more contemporary style soon after he began to do full time ministry. Then when we married and we started to do more and more concerts, people began asking for a CD. We recorded our first album about a year into our marriage (Mo Daijobu 2001, now out of production) and we were able to distribute it pretty widely as we traveled and did concerts. We also made a family band album (Marla joined the family band also when we married) and that one also sold several thousands copies. Between our band RAM’s Voice and the Ayatsuka Family Band we did over 70 concerts a year in our early marriage.

7. What has been the hardest part about making music in Japan or for Japanese people?

Because we live a great distance from Tokyo where there are other artists and more resources for recording and producing music, Rocky began to record our music at home. It is very time consuming and as our church plant has grown, and our kids have grown, it has become more and more difficult to focus on music and have enough time to do EVERY part of music production. From writing, arranging, recording, mixing, mastering, and distributing, it takes a lot of time and focus and it is hard to carve out the time from our schedules to make that happen regularly. And in this day and age, we feel that also being present on social media, producing music videos, and that kind of online presence has become necessary. Adding to how much time it takes to do this and do it well.

8. What has been the hardest part about promoting and spreading your music?

People don’t buy CDs anymore. Since streaming music online is more common, because of the sheer volume of music to choose from, people don’t discover or listen to small artists like ourselves. Financially, it doesn’t have that much impact on us, because we didn’t rely on concerts for our support. It’s just challenging to figure out how to get people to notice the music in such a huge sea of songs to choose from, and keep people listening consistently to the songs. Also, because of covid, our invitations to concerts has drastically declined, making it harder to expose people to our music in person.

9. How has God led, inspired, or encouraged you to keep at this when you had doubts?

The youth in our church have recently begun to really grow in their faith, write a few of their own songs, help to lead in worship, and so forth. This is incredibly inspiring to keep going.

10. What tips and advice would you give to someone who wants to create or cover Japanese Christian music?

It is very easy to lose focus on doing this for the pure purpose of leading others into worship and to a relationship with Jesus, and become caught up in the glory and attention that one can get from the world if you have musical talent. Stay focused on Jesus. Sing (or play or create) for an audience of one, and invite others to join in praising and worshiping him, instead of singing for the approval of those in the chairs in front of you or on the other side of the speaker. The authenticity of WHY you are performing shines through.

11. What sites, platforms, or apps are best when spreading your music around to Japanese people?

I’m not sure we are the best to ask about this. We upload our music now for distribution through TuneCore. We have Facebook and Instagram accounts, as well as a YouTube channel. But we need to improve in the area of our online presence and social media.

12. What has the reception been like to those who have heard your music? (Optional: Has anyone shared that they were touched and sought God after hearing your music?)

Yes, we get testimonies of people who are ministered to by our music. The most recent would be all of Rocky’s hymns on his acoustic hymn album. So many people enjoy that music!

OUTREACH EXPERIENCE

13. What is the best approach when sharing the gospel to Japanese people?

Relationships relationships relationships! We invite people into our home, into our lives. We share what we are going through and how Jesus is a part of every part of our lives. We have fun, and do things together but also have deep conversations and the Gospel is woven into all of our interactions with our friends. It’s about REAL relationships, something so rare for many Japanese, that really opens their hearts and minds to what is different about us and the answers for all of our issue found in Christ!

14. Please share your most positive/favorite interaction when evangelizing to a Japanese person.

Most of them happen at late night talks on retreats and camps. The one I remember the most is when a woman who had been coming to one of our weekly Bible studies opened up at camp about an abusive relationship she had been in once in her life and how much that left scars on her. She shared the time with our church body filled her life with the knowledge of God’s love. This person still has not put her faith in Christ, but we trust God is still working.

The other one that is the most memorable for me is a woman who came to faith in our ministry and God is working in her husband. Her husband’s mother is a Christian and when she died suddenly in an accident, the husband really wanted Rocky to do the funeral. It was during COVID so there were very few people around them going through this with them. The husband really opened up and shared a lot and we were able to point him so clearly to Christ as the answer to everything. This person also has still not surrendered their life to Jesus, but we know God is still working in him.

15. What has been the hardest part about sharing the gospel with Japanese people?

The fact that their foundational understanding of who God is is so far from the one true God of the Bible. It is very difficult to present God to them in a way that they understand this is not like a mythical deity among the thousands of gods they’ve grown up hearing about, but the one true God, the one who created them and all the things, and one who is PERFECT. And the idea that God wants a relationship with them. The gods of Japanese culture are too much like humans and it’s not about relationship with them but about “pleasing” them or not “angering” them, if one even believes in them at all. The foundational understanding of God as all knowing, all powerful, all sufficient, etc is so foreign and it takes time to help them learn and understand this whole new perspective, and get them to reject and let go of their previous view of god (kami). Plus the cultural pull to not go against the grain of what everyone else thinks and believes! To get them to branch out from the norm is so challenging.

16. Please share your most negative/most-hurtful interaction when evangelizing to a Japanese person. How did you handle it? And how did you recover from the experience?

The hardest thing for me was that once a woman who had been in our Bible study for years decided she believed and wanted to be baptized. But she was working at a Christian preschool and the staff there were pressuring her to be baptized in the church connected to the preschool. At first it was very hurtful to me that she would consider being baptized there after all of the time and effort we had poured into the relationship with her up until then (including her children as well). I felt that my disciple was being stolen from me. But I had to remember and realize that she belongs to Jesus. We led her to Jesus and it is HER faith and relationship with Him, not ours. So I let it go in lots of prayer and let God work in the situation however He chose to. We did not pressure her in any way. It was freeing to give it to God and let Him be in control.

17. What would you say is the general reception for Christianity within Japan? Are they open-minded and curious? Hateful? Defensive? Ignorant? Uninterested?

I believe in the past 28 years (the amount of time I, Marla, have been here) it has gone from being uninterested and ignorant to there being a lot more curiosity. However, the recent assassination of the former prime minister has caused a lot of suspicion of “religion” to resurface in the minds of many.

18. What has been the biggest lesson you personally had to learn when it comes to evangelizing? (ie patience, not taking things personally, more studying and preparation)

Definitely patience. Lots of patience. Lots of time. Sometimes I feel like time just hanging out, eating together, having fun, etc. can feel wasteful. I am a more task focused person. But Rocky is very much a quality time person. He loves to spend hours and hours just being with people. I have been able to see over the 24 years of our marriage and ministry together just how valuable those seemingly unstructured times with people have been. God uses all of those times to open the eyes of those in whom he is at work.

19. What motivates you to keep evangelizing and ministering despite any cold or hateful experiences?

It’s so clearly our calling. It’s what we both feel called to do and being obedient that, not matter the outcome, is important to both of us.

20. Are there any bible verses you use all the time when evangelizing to Japanese people?

There are too many to count because it always depends on the situation. We have a Bible study called Bible Link that is often a catalyst to get people over that last hump that is holding them back from totally putting their faith in Jesus. It links Old Testament stories to new Testament scripture, showing how God’s nature and plan all along was to rescue us from our state of sin and bring us into his kingdom. The verses in that Bible study can be really helpful.

21. What bible verses do you say to yourself to stay motivated and to combat fear/anxiety?

I would not say we have a lot of fear and anxiety associated with what we do. But I always remember Isaiah 41:10. And one of Rocky’s favorite verses is Matthew 6:33. Also Rocky is visually impaired and he loves the story where Jesus’ disciples ask why the blind man is blind. Jesus answered that it is because God would show his greatness through the man. That is found in John 9.

22. Please share some words of encouragement to your fellow brothers/sisters in Christ who are interested in sharing their faith to anyone around the world.

Begin where you are. If you dream of going to some other country to share the Gospel, make it a part of your daily life now. Be faithful in spreading the Gospel where God has planted you and it will come naturally and already be a part of your life, when or if God calls you to Japan or somewhere else around the world.

CONCLUSION

23. Any final words for the readers?

Thank you so much for your interest in our ministry. We would be so grateful for follows and shares on social media. If you shared the link to our TuneCore music online, our YouTube channel, our Bible study (more to come we hope), etc. that would be such a great way to support us.

24. If anyone would like to contact you and ask more questions, how can they reach you?

DMs on social media or email to marla@aromaministries.org OR rocky@aromaministries.org

Final Words From Nostalgia

I’d like to thank Marla again for doing this interview with me. This has been really enlightening and edifying, especially getting to see how things have changed since they started working together over 2 decades ago.

And that’s all from me. Hope you all have a wonderful day! God bless ^_^