MLC graduates Justin and Laura Steinke, with little Elijah and Leon, above Manila on New Year’s Eve
It was two weeks before Call Day at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary when senior Justin Steinke MLC ’18, WLS ’23 was pulled out of chapel for a private meeting with Rev. Larry Schlomer, administrator for WELS World Missions. He asked Justin a question that would determine the next several years—and maybe the entire contour—of his life.
Would Justin and his wife, Laura, consider a missionary call to Asia-Oceania where half of the world’s population is found? Where they’d live in the Philippines—specifically Manila, the most densely populated city in the world?
Where Justin would join a team that’s reaching out to the whole region? Where he’d help establish programs to empower local leaders—so they could start gospel groups, and gospel groups could become churches, and churches could plant more churches, and the good news could spread across the whole region?
The Philippines are one of 18 different countries in Asia and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, and thousands of small surrounding islands) that are served by 17 WELS missionaries. In 2024, missionaries and local leaders baptized almost 12,000 people in Asia-Oceania, and 160,000 gathered weekly around God’s Word.
They had 24 hours to decide.
Fortunately, they didn’t need the time. “Laura happened to be on campus,” Justin says. “Right after the meeting,
I talked to her, and I saw the look on her face, and we knew immediately. We just needed to tell our family.”
Then he adds “Our car was stolen in the spring, and we just had a feeling we might not need a car where we were going, whether in-country or abroad. But we really didn’t expect we’d be the ones called to a foreign mission. In our heads, there were more qualified candidates. But God has his plans!”
GOD’S PLAN AND PREPARATION
Their story actually began years earlier. In 2018, as seniors about to graduate and get married, Justin and Laura had applied to spend a year in a large urban center in East Asia (specific location withheld). Through the organization now called the Friends Network, they taught English at a university and started a number of Bible studies with friends.
They were excited to see the Spirit’s work. “Sometimes it’s the people you don’t expect who God brings into his kingdom,” Justin says, “and he makes it really clear that he is the one who creates faith through his Word. Yet he uses us to share that message with others!”
After a year, they came back to the States so Justin could enroll at the seminary for more pastoral training. Laura put her MLC education degree to good use teaching at Trinity in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Two years later, Justin’s vicar call took them to another large city—NYC—where Justin served Sure Foundation in Queens. He helped lead both English and Spanish services—“an experience that wouldn’t have been available to me if not for my Spanish classes at MLC, especially the immersion program,” he says. “I do not consider myself a linguist by any means! It doesn’t come naturally to me, but the program pushed me to explore it, and I am certainly blessed that it did!”
Looking back, they feel God used their experience in Queens to prepare them for their future in Manila. “That year was a formative experience we’re so grateful for,” Justin says. “It prepared us for the ‘grit’ of living abroad. Taking the subway while Laura was in labor, for instance, helped us become more flexible, adaptable, and gracious.”
It also intensified their love of urban life and their joy in working with different cultures and people groups. That part of Queens is sometimes called the most diverse place in the world. And coincidentally, Sure Foundation is right next door to the neighborhood known as “Little Manila.”
MISSIONARIES IN MANILA
For three years now, Justin and Laura have been sharing the Word in Manila. Home is a 900-square-foot condo, part of a three-tower complex housing 10,000 Filipinos—a whole city within the city. Justin does frontline mission work right near their home and also assists the entire region. “I start new groups in Asia and Oceania. I build systems, coach local church planters, and plant gospel groups myself that, Lord willing, one day will be local churches that are planting other local churches, so that the invisible church might grow in Asia and Oceania.”
Justin is developing a church-planting program called Wellspring, which guides church planters to “Go, Grow, Gather, and Live” in their communities. Coaching local church planters is key, he says. “We’re very intentional in entrusting local leaders to entrust others with the gospel and helping them lead groups themselves.”
There’s more to this story.
Read how Justin and Laura are sharing the gospel with yayas, using “Tagpo” videos, and making an impact in their mission field with everything they learned at MLC.
