From Tohoku

While in the Tohoku area, our base camp is Global Mission Chapel. They have a cool testimony of how they got their building (formerly a Pachinko parlor) and how God worked through their renovation journey to prepare them to be a key contributor to the relief efforts now. Last night, we got an overview of some of the realities of living in the aftermath of the tsunami and losing 125 lives from the community. The thing that broke my heart was the report that 6 months after March 11, the suicide rate doubled.

In the morning, we joined their daily prayer walk/drive to the nearby town of Usuiso where one of the church members lost two from his family in the tsunami. They lived less than 100 yards from the beach. They’re now asking God to build His Church there.

From mid-morning through early afternoon, a part of our team got to go to one of the temporary housing sites for fellowship and to help out with serving lunch. I got to hang out with Carolina, a YWAM Tokyo staffer from El Salvador. It was nice to get to know her and hear her story as we served drinks.

It was a much lighter work day than we had been told to expect, which I didn’t mind. I was actually wanting to meet and talk to as many people as possible, and that doesn’t always happen if you’re working with your own teammates for 6 hours trying to move a wall. Since it was pouring rain from late morning until now.

This has been the most difficult part of the trip to process so far, so please pray I’ll hold on to whatever God wants me to take home and let go of what He wants to leave here.

Thanks for praying for us along the way. We have a night of fellowshipping with the volunteers tonight and sharing testimonies from the day and worship service tomorrow before heading back to Tokyo in the afternoon. We have a free day tomorrow before possibly joining Tolyo’s House of Prayer for another meeting. I’m also trying to connect with some old friends from past years, so please pray we can connect. I know it isn’t crucial to this mission, but I’d be so encouraged to spend time with them again after over 5 years. I grateful, though, to catch up with one of my friends at a meeting on Thursday night.

Just finished helping to prep dinner for 50 staff and volunteers, so I’m hiding out in the girls’ room while the curry is heating…on a massage chair! it kind of hurts! And its hard to type on a phone when the chair is shaking you. Yes, following God to Japan is hard. grateful for you as you support me in this!