An Audible Voice Leads Missionary Luke Nichols to Three Church Members Lost for Decades in Japan

In a BYU–Hawaii devotional titled "I Am a Witness" (September 29, 2026), Luke J. Nichols — a former criminal defense attorney of 11 years and the host of the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel — testified of a series of miracles he experienced as a young missionary serving in the Japan Fukuoka Mission.

While working with a congregation in the city of Kumamoto, Nichols and his companion spent three months repairing a handwritten membership directory of some 540 names, contacting all but 15 of the people on it. Then, as he was getting up one morning to start the day, he heard a voice "as clear and as tangible" as a person standing beside him, saying: "Go to the city of Ozu. Go to the city hall building and ask for Yamada Taro." He immediately recognized the name as one of the 15 members they had tried and failed to find.

The two missionaries bought train tickets to Ozu, walked into the large government building, and — led by a quiet impression to try one door on the second floor — found the man himself working in a cubicle behind the counter. Brother Yamada had been baptized as a teenager and, after going away to college, had not seen another member of the Church in 20 years. He gave the missionaries his new address and phone number and agreed to meet with the bishop and receive home teachers. "After 20 years, brother Yamada was not lost anymore," Nichols told the audience. "That is a miracle."

Shortly thereafter, he said, "the Lord performed several more miracles to help us find two more members from that list." The two members lived in the furthest reaches of the ward's boundaries; the missionaries had no phone number for them, and their address read only the town of Takamori, at the foot of Mount Aso. Nichols and his companion set out on a 27-mile bicycle ride over the mountains. Several hours in, skirting the volcano, his companion's bicycle chain snapped in two in the middle of a farmer's field. Their plan to get help from a member family failed when the wife shut the door on them.

Discouraged, Nichols knelt on the roadside a block or two away and prayed: "God, I know you want us to find these people and I know you can do all things, but we can't do this without a bicycle. Where can I go to find a bicycle?" He felt the Spirit answer: "Go to the city hall building and ask for a bicycle." He opened his eyes to find a city hall building a block away. At the front desk, while a puzzled woman tried to understand why he was asking her for a bicycle, an old farmer walked through the lobby and said, "Hey, sorry to interrupt, but I heard you say you needed a bicycle. I got a bike you can have." In his garage was a brand-new bicycle with nothing wrong with it — "I was going to throw it away, but I missed trash day," he explained, and offered to take the broken bike away too. It fit the companion "like a glove."

Arriving at the outskirts of Takamori, Nichols knelt again in prayer on the side of the highway: "We've done everything we know how to do and it's not enough. We cannot find them without your help. Where do we go?" The Spirit came to him and said, "Go to the police station and ask for help" — and he opened his eyes to see a police station directly across the highway. Inside, the officer at the counter brushed him off: "That's not my job. Get lost." But a man who had been standing behind Nichols in line tapped him on the shoulder — he knew the woman they were seeking. He pulled out his cell phone, called her, and handed Nichols the phone; she gave her number and address and agreed to drive to the police station to meet them. "Let's go two for two," Nichols said, and within minutes the same man had reached the second missing member as well. Both agreed to reconnect with the Church after years away.

Nichols concluded: "There are many things about the gospel I do not understand. And sometimes I have doubts and concerns like anybody else. But I heard a miraculous voice. And that voice led me to find three people who needed to reconnect with the church. I cannot deny that and I cannot explain it away. No amount of hallucinations can teach me things I do not know. No delusions or wishful thinking can help me find a man that's been missing for 20 years and do it three times in a row."

He framed the account with his courtroom experience as a defense attorney, testifying that the evidence for God is a longer list of witnesses than any court could demand: "The evidence exists: God lives, Jesus is our Savior and the scriptures are true. The witnesses are many and each of you can pray to God to know the truth for yourselves."