Tohoku Trip 2 Post #4

It snowed that night and Derick & I made it despite the cold.  I woke up fairly early and boiled water to make coffee that my honey had bought for me.  It felt so good.  We headed out and found the right road with a vision of having breakfast at McDonalds in Ishinomaki just outside the high water mark.  We arrived in time at 08:00 only to find out that they were not opening until 10:00 so we had to wait until they opened only to find they were only able to do take out menu.

We called the team and managed to hook up with them as they arrived.  Our job today was clearing mud from a store.  This involved shoveling the mud into bags and carrying it outside.  There was a lot of broken glass in the mud so we had to be careful.

We made it through the day with only one little cut and a good feeling of a job well done.

We could still see how a power hose would enable us to make the final product look even better.

This was a much dirtier kind of work than clearing the parking lots. The Japanese Army  provided volunteers with a hose down at the end of the day!

As we walked the streets we could see there was still much work to be done and some of it needed more than a shovel and wheelbarrow to move the stuff out.

Before we went home Mr. Kimura having heard about my idea of housing teams in Ishinomaki showed us a building with a clean open second floor that he offered for that purpose.  It,  however, did not have any electricity and there was still no way for anyone to get a shower. It was good, though, to see the trust built in relationship that Mr. Kimura would offer us this location.

After returning to the Baptist Church that evening I felt the need for our team to take a break and visit Sendai to enjoy the cherry blossom season which we did the next day.  See the next post…..  Coming soon……..

Tohoku Trip 2 Post #3

Day three begins the same as day two with devotions led by Pastor Noguchi.  However, after that we divided our team leaving Jack, Jason and Joel in Sendai while  Derick and I headed off north to Unosumai (just north of Kamaishi) to deliver the supplies that we saw were needed from visiting there on our first trip.  This picture is very representative of the area nearest the ocean where the waves came in and totally destroyed the city.

Here you can see the cooking pots that we bought in Tokyo along with the water containers we received from Samaritan’s Purse.  The cooking pots were to supplement the one that they had been using which they had found in the river after the tidal wave.  (see post 1 trip 1).  In talking with Mr. Oikawa we found out that they were able to have a bus come once every five days to take them to a public bath and that they still did not have any water supply but were hoping to get a well installed within a week.

In the photo on the right you can see the wood burning cooking stove that they are using outside for their community.   We also gave them a new blue tarp to provide cover from the rain while they were cooking.

Mr. Oikawa was very happy to show me the apartment where they had set up the clothes that had been donated and which I had spent most of my time sorting the first time we visited them.

I also got to meet his wife and daughter (see photo to left with daughter and granddaughter) who had been the main workers in overseeing this part of the project.

I t was special to be able to give a personal donation of baby supplies  from Janet who came with us on the first trip to Tohoku.

Derick and I spent some time talking with Mr. Oikawa and asked him what needs he was aware of that we might be able to help with.  He told us about new families coming in from the evacuation centres to the apartments that had just been renewed who would be needing kitchen supplies as all their personal things had been lost in the disaster.

Things have been improving in the area though.  In my first post I showed you a river bed full of houses that had been carried there by the waves.  Here is the same riverbed now all cleaned up and ready for the rainy season!

Click here for the original picture taken on our first trip two weeks ago.

Derick and I left Unosumai and headed back to Kamaishi.  Next is a picture taken in the port area.  It looks very much like so many other pictures but it means so much more to me now.  I had watched Utube videos of the wave arriving in this port but now I was actually standing on the land where it happened.  When I returned to Tokyo I reviewed the video and the impact was much deeper having walked the street.

We spent most of the remainder of the day driving south back towards Ishinomaki so we could re-join our team.  We stopped in Ofunato and drove through the port area where  huge damage was very evident.   After eating supper we kept heading south.  It became dark and we were not able to fully witness the bay after bay of smashed houses, broken bridges, ruined possessions and destroyed farm land that we passed in the night.  I was very thankful that I could not see everything.  The impact of it all would have been too much for me.

Finally around 10:00  pm or so we ran into a closed road with a detour.  Having followed the arrows for about 45 minutes we arrived back at the same closed road again so decided to call it quits and slept in the car in the parking lot of a hospital.  It was very cold but we were thankful for the car to sleep in.