John Weslie Niles Jr.

John Weslie Niles Jr. was born on August 28, 1956, to the late John W. (Pete) Niles Sr. and Joan Niles Huffman at Marietta Memorial in Marietta, Ohio.

John was a 1974 graduate of Point Pleasant High School. While in high school, he played football, wrestled, and was very active in the Boy Scouts of America- earning the Eagle Scout and God and Country Awards.

John joined the Point Pleasant Presbyterian Church and was a member there for 56 years. He served as a Youth Counselor at Bluestone one summer. He accepted the Lord as a teenager and chose his life work to serve Him at that time.

After graduation, John joined the Army and acquired Inhalation Therapy during that time. He worked with training for a few years before deciding to use his GI Bill to attend Nyack College in New York. While there, he was blessed to go on a mission trip to Peru. In 1980, he received his BS degree in Missions at Nyack. He then ventured west to Oklahoma working at Oral Roberts University Hospital.

John felt called even further into the Mission field by joining Youth With A Mission (YWAM), which is an interdenominational Christian mission organization with a focus on missionary work and training for Christian Missions. He lived in Hawaii while with YWAM from 1985 to 1989. During that time, he went on other mission trips to such places as Tahiti, China, and Japan. It was there that he chose to serve in Japan, falling in love with the people and the culture.

When moving to Japan, John began to teach English and used that platform to tell the Japanese people about the Lord. Another way he spread the gospel was by performing Christian weddings, thus exposing young couples to God’s love. During those years, John was diagnosed with Glaucoma and slowly lost his eyesight. He became totally blind in one eye and at the end of his life he only had 30% vision in the other eye.

John met and fell in love with a beautiful, loving, kind Japanese young woman. John and Yuri were wed in a Christian ceremony on May 27, 2000. The both loved helping and serving people and were so kind and helpful to their neighbors.

On January 5, 2026, in Kyoto, Japan, John walked into the loving arms of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He can now see perfectly and shares the joy of heaven with his brother, Bill; his dad, John (Pete) Niles; and others. He was loved very much by “his” Japanese friends.

John is survived by his wife, Yuri; mother-in-law, Kyio, both of Kyoto, Japan; mother, Joan Huffman and sister, Martha, both of Leon, WV; sister, Pam Heib of Point Pleasant; a precious uncle, Bill Lane of Fremont, California; special aunt, Beulah Lane of Parkersburg, WV, and many nieces, nephews, and cousins.

You may honor John’s life by keeping the Lord in your life and putting Him first in all things.