Sayaka Ikeda
Sayaka was born and raised in Japan, and went to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale as an unsaved undergraduate international student. After 4 years of attending the Japanese Bible Study in Southern Illinois University-Carbondale's Chi Alpha Campus Ministries, she got radically saved and discipled through Chi Alpha. She became a full-time pastor in 2011 to serve with Chi Alpha and Calvary Campus Church in Carbondale, Illinois. However, in 2026 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 Christian 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!
Favorite Bible verses: Philippians 3:12-14
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.