Light For Japan Productions (L4JP) is the production ministry of Karen Ellrick.  Karen and her husband Dan came from the United States to Japan as missionaries in 1996 - you can read about their missions ministry at proverbs2525.org.  Before that, Karen had been a systems engineer, technical support engineer, database developer, technical documentation designer, semi-pro musician, photography hobbiest, and various other things that the Lord used to prepare her for the things she is currently doing.  In 2002 she began to do video, first with teaching DVDs of Bible messages (both church sermons and studio-style) and training DVDs for short-term missionaries, and then branched out to weddings, baptisms, seminars, interviews, and a variety of other things.  She came to especially enjoy making collages of video footage set to music - one such collage can be seen on the front page of the Osaka International Church (OIC) website.

In about 2004, she and Dan were investigating resources for equipping the small group ministry at OIC, and one resource they especially liked was the Life Together Worship Series (no longer called that, currently repackaged under other titles), which provided an assortment of popular modern worship songs along with video of nature and other scenes to enhance the meaning of the songs.  We provided the DVDs for the small groups, and they were a big hit, and when the church's book cart started stocking copies of the DVDs for sale, they sold well until we had sold out all the online outlets we could find.  Sometime in there, Dan said to Karen, "Why doesn't this kind of resource exist for Japanese songs?  Karen, you do video - why don't you make it?"  Thus, the journey began.  She had already been enjoying filming nature when she had a chance, but after that point she made more of an intentional effort to gather the kind of footage that would  be useful for this, even taking her camera equipment with her to places like Hawaii, Thailand, and Israel.  At first she felt the copyright hurdles would make it too hard to produce her own DVD using copyrighted music, so she planned to start out using only songs by Noah Music Ministry, which allows free use of their music and recordings for Christian purposes.  But in 2007, when she only had one song completed, she had an opportunity to show that song to the staff of Michtam Music Ministry, the first and most prolific producer of contemprary praise music in Japan (and Karen's favorite).  They liked it, and for the next year Karen selected 36 Michtam songs to be a series of three DVDs that Michtam would handle as their product, and prepared video for the 12 songs that would be on the first DVD.  But in early 2009 she and Michtam discovered that their visions differed too much to do it that way, so Karen decided to try doing it as her product rather than theirs, and to include music from other music ministries besides Michtam for variety.  The copyright hurdles have been indeed challenging, but the Lord has been guiding her through.

In July of 2009, Karen formed Light For Japan Productions as the legal ministry "business" for producing and selling these DVDs and possibly other resources in the future.  Her vision is to use the gifts God has given her to encourage the Church in Japan, helping them grow in their faith and reach their nation for Christ.

Besides video, Karen likes web development - she has built and maintains seven websites of various churches and ministries in Japan, and has written two online database applications that help ministries to be more efficient and accurate (one for managing data related to people, the other for worship leaders to manage songs).  She also works with print media, having produced countless flyers, posters, booklets, and even a book.  She continues to be involved in OIC's music ministry (of course using her own database!) as well as music and/or sound production for other events like the Global Day of Prayer, often takes the role of photographer at events she is not videoing, and maintains the computer resources of OIC.  These are all activites that Karen considers fun, and she counts it a blessing that the emotional line between work and play is so blurred in her life!