At Adventure's End

Somehow, it was a long summer and a short one for me.  I've seen a lot and learned a lot of invaluable things in Japan and it's not an exaggeration to call the experience "life changing."  This post will be mostly about things that I've learned and will be a bit rambling.

The first thing I have learned is just how generous my family, friends, and church are.   There wasn't much time between when I asked for help fundraising and when I left for Japan, but people quickly donated money, even many who were hurting financially.  In fact,  more money was sent than what I needed!  I am so thankful to God and to those who helped me pay for this mission!  For those of you who are reading, thank you!

I also was able to finally get to know Japan, the country that I had studied for years.  First, I confirmed a sneaking suspicion that I've had for a while:  that Japanese people are people and that you cannot completely peg someone just from what country they grew up in.

I saw firsthand how desperately Japan needs the Gospel.  The Japanese know absolutely nothing about Jesus or God.  Their worldview is different to the point where things that seem incredibly obvious to me would never occur to them (and the other way around).  And while America has its own host of problems, Japan is in serious pain.  Unfortunately, the number of missionaries in Japan are decreasing, especially since the earthquake.  Which is really unfortunate because I think that the earthquake has caused Japan to become more open than it has been in centuries.

It's a bit strange for me to think about it, but I've seen things that most people haven't or ever will.  I've seen an entire city wiped out, and met people who have lost their houses, friends, and family.  From this, I think I've learned to be more sensitive towards other people's suffering, and also to realize that the bad things in my life could be a lot worse.  I've also learned that I need to listen to others more and speak less (my Japanese listening ability is better than my speaking, which helped me do that).

While in Japan, I was able to make a lot of friends and connections.  I'm glad to have met each one of them and I really hope to see them again (many of them I know I'll meet the other side of eternity, but I also want to meet them again here).  I've met so many amazing people who are giving their time and money to serve the Lord, and I'm so glad to know them.

Most of all, I've learned that Japan is a wonderful place to be and I can't wait to go back someday!

Thank you for reading this blog.  Even though I'm back home, I'll try and update it every once in a while!

Working in Nara

After returning to Tokyo, I had a few days to relax before packing up and heading to Nara Prefecture.  While I was still planning my trip, I made a request to go to the city of Osaka in the western area of Japan (Tokyo is in the east for those of you who don't know Japanese geography).  The reason was so that I could visit a church there that I've been paying attention to for a while (which is a story in an of itself).  The nearest Converge missionaries were the Chapmans in Ikoma city, Nara.

Getting down there meant that I was able to take the Nozomi bullet train (aka the shinkansen) down to Kyoto before taking some more trains to Nara.  The shinkansen was really nice, actually.  It was like an airplane ride with more legroom.

Nozomi bullet train

Surprisingly, I was able to navigate the trains all the way from Kyoto to Nara, which is a big deal considering my talent at getting lost.  It was there that I was picked up by Jeff Chapman and his daughter Anna., and they took me to their home where I met Jeff's son Caleb.  Things were a bit crazy at the Chapman house then, since they had just sent their oldest daughter Rachel to college in the US and Jeff's  wife Barb was also in the States.  Poor Jeff had a lot on his plate, so I'm glad I was able to help him with some of it.

My main job was to work on tracts.  Jeff had ordered 10,000 tracts about Ayako Miura, one of the most famous Japanese Christian authors and I needed to stamp the address of the house they would have church in on each of them (which was, incidentally, the place I stayed for those two weeks).  Mrs. Chapman had already stamped around 1000 tracts, so I ended up stamping over 9000.  It was tedious and boring work, but there was a TV where I was staying and I found a few interesting shows I could watch while working.

Ikoma

The Chapmans are using tracts as a change in strategy.  For years they've been trying to develop relationships and introduce the Gospel later, and that approach has had frustratingly little to show for it, for various reasons.  So now they're going to try and spread the net wide across Ikoma.  To be honest, I'm not totally sure how effective it will be, since Japanese people are generally not at all receptive towards that kind of evangelism, but hopefully God will use it.

The two weeks I stayed in Nara were really great.  The Chapmans were very hospitable and we were even able to take some time off from working and went to see the city a bit.  Nara was originally the capital of Japan and has a lot of old temples and shrines.  It's also famous for its deer, which are very common in the city.  We first went to Nara Park where tons of deer hung around.  They're tame and only get aggressive if they think you're hiding food.

We also went to Toudaiji a huge Buddhist temple and the largest wooden structure in the world.  Ironically, I was only able to take pictures of the gate in front of the temple before the battery on the camera died.  Inside the huge building was a huge statue of Buddha with other statues of his guardians.  I guess I've always thought that praying to statues and man-made things was mostly a thing of the past (I figured that nowadays idolatry was towards things like money or power), but there were plenty of people praying and offering incense.  I was able to see what kind of hurdles the Gospel has to go through in Japan, and how desperately the Japanese need Christ.

The gate to the temple.  I'm glad that my God does not need a temple.

My stay in Nara seemed to end before it began, and after two weeks, I was back on the bullet train to Tokyo.  I stayed at the Mehn's house one last night before going to Narita airport, Los Angeles, Los Vegas, and then finally arriving home.  I'll write more about my overall thoughts in my next post here.  Thanks for reading!

Rebuilding Ishinomaki

Hello, everyone!  I know that it's been a while since I've posted, and I'm sorry.  Like I said in my last post, my internet situation for the last two weeks of my trip made it so that I couldn't really do a long post or anything.  And even though I've been back since Sunday evening, I've been fighting a losing battle with jetlag, so I've been forgetting to update this blog.  I really am sorry!

My second trip to Ishinomaki passed quickly even though it was longer than my first one (ten days as opposed to seven).  I worked in the same area, so I was able to see a lot of people I had met from the first time and develop some friendships more.

The operation in Shintate had grown considerably since I had been there before.  The main task that Dean wanted people to work on was a field owned by a man named Mr. Abe (different from any Mr. Abe that I've mentioned before.  It's a really common name in the area).  He had grown vegetables in his field, but the tsunami had flooded it with salt water and oil.  And to make things worse, there was a factory right next door that made cell phone parts, which were strewn all across and even buried underneath the field.  It was such a mess that the Abes had given up hope of restoring it, which was especially sad because it had been passed down from Mrs. Abe's father.  Such a job would require a lot of people.

So God provided a lot of people.  With the group I was with, nearly fifty volunteers showed up the first day to work on that field.  It was amazing how much that many people can get done and I think that the Abes were really impressed with the work.  First, we had to clear off all the salt that had solidified on the surface, which was basically the top two inches of ground.  Then we had to dig down about a foot and sift through the dirt to find any glass, plastic, metal, or oil deposits.  It was long and tedious, but it got done.  The worst part of it was fighting the Japanese summer back.  Of course, I'm used to bone-dry Colorado, where any sweat quickly evaporates.  In Japan, though, summers are horribly hot and horribly humid.  Each day, I would completely sweat through my shirt, have it dry over lunch, and then sweat through it again.  By Friday, it was hot enough to be dangerous and we had people taking breaks often.  Thankfully, Dean had bought some stand-up tents that we could work under to keep out a lot of the heat.

That Sunday our group prayerwalked in Shintate, just like the first trip.  This time, we went to the very edge of the neighborhood.  I was really surprised to see that just a few blocks away from where I had been working, almost every house was abandoned.  Out of almost one hundred houses, only one in that side of town had residents.  Sadly, there were some houses that had been looted after their owners either abandoned them or died in the tsunami.

In Japan, having flavored shaved ice is a traditional summertime treat.  That Monday, to give the community a bit of a break from the sameness of recovery life and to bring some cheer back to Shintate, we set up some tents and prepared for a big shaved ice party!  We also had a singer, one of Mr. Abe's (the man who is like a pastor but isn't one) former students, who came to sing and share the gospel.  It was absolutely fantastic and over one hundred people showed up.  For a short time, I could see what the city was like before the disaster.

Having been to Shintate for two trips, I had developed a lot of attachment to the area and the people there.  I will never forget my time working there and someday I will go back to see how things have changed.  Please pray for the people there, that they would be healed from the suffering that they have experienced and that God would open their hearts to the Gospel.

The City That Disappeared

Hello again, everyone!  I'm back from my second trip as a volunteer worker in Ishinomaki.  While I was there, I realized that I had forgotten something very important in my last blog post.  Honestly, I'm kind of ashamed and baffled that I forgot it since it can only be described as unforgettable (although, I was pretty rushed when I was writing my last post).

On the day that I left Ishinomaki for my first trip, we took a detour with Andrew, the man who runs the Samaritan's Purse base, to an evacuation center in a city called Minami Sanriku so that we could bring them fresh vegetables and clothes.

Minami Sanriku is one of the cities that, after the earthquake and tsunami, has been essentially wiped off the map.  Seeing this utter destruction was very hard and pictures alone can't convey the seriousness of it.  It looked like a war had happened there.

I went back to Minami Sanriku on my second trip, which I returned from last week.  By now, a number of people have moved out of the evacuation center (really just the local middle school's gymnasium) and into temporary housing facilities.  We delivered fresh produce and some meat to the roughly 50 families living there (again, this was Andrew's idea).  It wasn't much, but I think that they really appreciated it.  Afterwards, we went to the same evacuation center and sang some hymns (in Japanese) to the people staying there.  With virtually no Christian population there, not one of them had a clue what we were singing about, but I think that it was a comfort for them.  At the very least, it was something to break up the boredom of the day.

I'm writing about Minami Sanriku partially to convey the seriousness of the situation here in Japan and partially to help get over it myself.  Going there was upsetting for me, and I think that posting these pictures and telling people about it can help me.  Thank you for reading!  My ability to access the internet is a bit shaky right now, so this may be my last post until I return to the US.

 The evacuation center

This fishing boat is in a ditch half way up the mountainside

Ishinomaki Day 6 and Beyond

After such an eventful day on Sunday, the next day passed like a blur, so this post will be short.  I spent time sweeping the mud off of a sidewalk before the entire team got together to go all-out in mudding out a man's house.  We worked for at least four hours shoveling and hauling mud out and not much else.  But we got a lot done and were glad to put in a good day's work.

The day after that, we packed up and left for the eight hour ride back.  That also passed like a blur and before we knew it, we were back in Tokyo where I promptly went to sleep.  Going to Touhoku was really an amazing experience.  It's been exciting, depressing, and exhausting.  It wasn't what I would call "fun," but it was definitely a good thing to have done and I wouldn't want to have spent my summer any other way.

It's been about a month since I got back, and I'm currently doing the last minute preparations for another team.  The teams keep getting bigger with sixteen people for this one.  I'll be in the same area but probably doing different things.  The Mehns are going to America, so I'll be the only one who has had experience with this there.  I'll be gone for the next ten days.  I hope this trip will be as memorable as the first one!  Thank you for reading!

Ishinomaki Day 5

My fifth day was a Sunday, so we decided not to do physical work.  Even though I didn't pick up a shovel or even put on my boots that day, it was the most memorable and rewarding of all the time I spent working in Ishinomaki.

First, we went to Mr. Abe's church, Ishinomaki House of Prayer (Mr. Abe is the man in the video I posted earlier).  The church has about seven members, all of them elderly except for Mr. Abe's son.  Technically, the church doesn't have a pastor: Mr. Abe does everything a pastor does except preach, so he denies that he is one.  For the sermon, they listened to a recording of another preacher.  Afterwards, we had lunch and, in typical Japanese style, they were extremely gracious hosts.

After lunch, a non-Christian couple showed up.  We had been told that they had lost a son in the tsunami.  I don't think I've ever seen anyone quite like these two.  They looked totally hollow, like shells of the people they were.  They didn't talk, except for basic greetings.  One of the church members talked a little bit about her daughter, who also died in the tsunami.  She talked about how, even though she missed her daughter terribly and it hurt so much, that because they were both Christians, they would see each other again.  Towards the end, she was crying and I was having a hard time not doing the same.

Afterwards, we returned to Shintate and did prayerwalking.  Prayerwalking is exactly what it sounds like:  we would go to a person's house and pray for them.  We also prayed for Shintate in general: for physical healing and rebuilding and for a spiritual awakening and interest in the Gospel.

We split into two groups to pray since Dr. Mehn and Monica were going to deliver a box of clothes to a woman in the neighborhood, Mrs. Iseya.  After a while, my group went back to Mrs. Iseya's house to regroup.  Mr. and Mrs. Iseya, Dr. Mehn, and Monica were all standing outside and when they saw us approach, Mrs. Iseya ran up to me, grabbed my hands and bowed lower than I've ever seen a Japanese person bow.  She went to each of the team members and did this, constantly telling us thank you.  It was a bit surreal, since most Japanese people I've met are fairly reserved and those up north even more so.  But Mrs. Iseya was downright giddy!  She looked like she was holding back tears.  It's a bit difficult to describe in words, but this experience was had a huge impact on me.  It was like seeing the fruit of the work that we had put into the neighborhood finally come out.  That box of clothes was only about $50, but it made such a difference.

It seemed like after that, we ran into a lot of thankful people.  We stopped by the house of Mrs. Komatsu, which we had mudded out, and she happened to be around and thanked us.  We also went to another neighborhood called Watanoha (which means something like "where the waves cross over."  Sadly, that's very accurate), where a team from a Brazilian-Japanese church was working.  This team had worked like machines on one house, completely removing the ruined walls and mudding out the floor in one day.  The couple that lived in the house were very happy, and even thanked our team even though we hadn't worked on it.

When we got back to base, we were really encouraged and touched by what we had been through that day.  And with two days without physical work, we were ready to put in one last hard, long day before going back to Tokyo.

Ishinomaki Day 4

For my fourth day, we took a break from the relief work.  I was on a trip to Yamagata within my trip to Ishinomaki within my trip to Japan.  I felt like I was in the movie Inception.  It was really nice to relax and see northern Japan outside of the disaster zone.  Of course, the effects of the earthquake could still be seen.  Yamagata is usually a bustling city full of people, but when I was there it was practically empty.

 The main bit of sightseeing that we did was at the nearby Kaminoyama Castle.  Actually, the real castle was torn down a long time ago, and the one we visited was a reconstruction with a museum on the inside.  This isn't that surprising: there aren't that many true castles left in Japan (I hope to visit one of them when I go to the Kansai region later this month).  Still, I really liked it.  For some reason, I love the architecture of older Japanese buildings like castles, temples, and shrines.

 There was a bonsai festival going on that day

The tour was really fun!  We got to see a lot of historical artifacts from the area and learned some about how the castle fit into Japan's history.  By the end, we were well-rested and ready to head back to the Samaritan's Purse base.