Steve and Rochelle met in Japan. They each went as singles to Tokyo, in October ’83 (Steve) and February ’84 (Rochelle). Steve picked Rochelle up at the airport and brought her back to west Tokyo to be his next door neighbor.
Steve and Rochelle were married in 1986 in Levittown, PA during their first furlough. After returning to Japan, they started Japanese language study full time.
Just a year later Andy was born in Tokyo, followed 2 years later by Ben. 3 years after the Clarks moved to Nagoya, Melissa was born. Finally, after 10 more years, God blessed us with Joshua, who was born in Tokyo. So you could say that all 4 children were made in Japan.
They served at several universities in Tokyo over the first 6 years, after which the leadership challenged them to lead a new team to reestablish a campus ministry in the city of Nagoya.
They led the team in Japan’s 3rd largest city, and the ministry began and grew to include Nanzan and Nagoya universities. This work was from 1990 to 1994.
After furlough in 1995, the leadership challenged Steve to take over the office management, administration and accounting roles for the ministry. Since 1996 Steve has led the administrative team, and in the fall 1996 he was also asked to take on the role of Coverage Coordinator, responsible for all the Jesus film and video ministry in Japan.
Steve continued to serve in these roles, and additionally began serving in a part time role developing our human resource/staff care functions for the 150 staff and short-termer JCCC team throughout the country.
The family lived in a northwest suburb of Tokyo near the national office of Japan CCC (1 train station away) and the Christian Academy of Japan (missionary kids school – 6 stations away) for over 10 years.
After 23 years in Japan we relocated to the Campus Crusade for Christ World Headquarters in Orlando, FL. It was a major transition. Our desire was to be available to Rochelle’s mom, who now lives with us, and to our college kids. It has also helped to be in the US while Rochelle has gone through chemo treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which we discovered she had since about 2005.
Since August 2007 we are sending US staff members overseas in support of the Great Commission from the Orlando headquarters. We are involved in sending out over 1300 new full-time staff, part-time staff and interns in the US and internationally each year. We continue to pray and support the work in Japan, our family homeland!