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Tony Haug was born
and raised near Willow Lake, South Dakota. He stayed busy helping out on
the family dairy farm with his mother, father, and older brother. Being raised in a Christian family, Tony also
sought after a relationship with Christ. He also participated in a variety of sports until graduation from high
school in 1982.
During a chapel service at Liberty University on February 3, 1983, Tony accepted the Lord as his Savior and
received assurance of his salvation in Christ alone. That summer he worked on a mission team in the inner city
of Washington, DC.
After returning to Liberty University that
next fall, he felt God's call on his life to serve in world missions after hearing a challenging message during chapel. At that time he changed his major from pastoral ministries to cross cultural church-planting
ministries and began preparing for a ministry overseas. During his
second year at the school he was one of the leaders in the pastoral mentoring program at the college. After marrying
his wife, Marcia, in the summer of 1984, Tony and his wife spent three months in Manaus, Brazil studying the language
for what they believed would be their future country of ministry and then returned to Lynchburg for Tony's final year of college.
In 1985, through the influence of one of his
professors, Dr. Don Rickards, Tony and Marcia were offered the opportunity to go to Japan to teach for one year
in a missionary children's school. Excited about the opportunity, they accepted the position as teachers for the Hofu
Christian School and arrived in Japan in August of 1986. It was during the first conference held by the host mission
board in Shimonoseki, Japan that Tony and Marcia felt confident that Shimonoseki was where God wanted them to spend their lives ministering.
After consulting with their spiritual mentors, Dr. Lee and Dr. Lila Bruckner, they returned to America in 1987 and were accepted
as the first PIONEERS missionaries to Japan. After raising support and welcoming their first child
into the world, they returned to Japan to begin their full time ministry. They served with Pastor Keiichi Kobayashi
until the following spring when they moved to Shimonoseki City to begin their church-planting ministry in the Kawanaka area
of Shimonoseki. Tony has been pastoring Shimonoseki Christ Bible Church since its inception on May 7, 1989 and has been
involved in two other church plants. Tony also completed his Master's Degree in Advanced Japanese Studies from Sheffield University in the summer of 2002. (Tony wrote a paper during his studies called "The Path of Christian Faith in Japan" which you
can read by visiting PIONEER Japan's Special Article page.)
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(Connect to PIONEERS Site)
Marcia was born in Tokyo, Japan. Her parents, Rev. and
Mrs. Z.T. Rankin, were church-planting missionaries working in Hachioji, Japan.
She accepted the Lord as her Saviour at a very young age. At the age of
eleven, Marcia and her family moved to California where her father began a new ministry while pastoring a Japanese church
there. In 1978 she moved again with her family to Mississippi where she graduated from high school. Marcia met her husband while going to college in Lynchburg, VA. They
married in 1984 after she graduated with a bachelors of science in English Education. Marcia stays actively involved
in the church-planting ministry teaching Japanese mothers how to raise their children by biblical principles. All three
of Tony and Marcia's children are taught English and history at home by Marcia while they also maintain a full
curriculum schedule at the local Japanese elementary and junior high school.
Send the Haug Family an E-mail
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