Tohoku Trip 3 Post #1

The preparation for this trip was intense with all the work needed for the kitchen kits. Added to this was that this time we would do our very first “Takedashi” or community meal for the people in Kamaishi.  This included buying 100 kilos of charcoal, a few less kilos of chicken, containers to hold all of this, salad and all the other things needed to barbeque chicken for about 160 people.  None of this would have been possible without the many folks who participated to make this happen including YWAM Tokyo DTS staff and students who visited the 100 yen stores to accumulate the needed supplies for the kitchen kits and who assisted  Sharayah Burch (staff) who awesomely marinated the chicken.

I was blessed to be joined again by Derick who has now been on all 3 trips. Our team had some new dynamics,  too.   We had David, our Tokyo DTS leader, plus YWAM Kona, Hawai leaders Mike, Jackie and Peter who joined the endeavour to make plans for teams from their base to come in the month to come.   Also Gary from the DTS staff came and brought along his special friend,  Naoko.  Finally, we had the real joy of having Louie and Kosuke from Tokyo Baptist Church.

Ken Ito from TBC arranged for us to have a second vehicle which was VERY needed not just for the number of the team going  but also for the amount of supplies we were needing to carry for the BBQ.  Ken also did the paper work needed to get us free road tolls.  This alone saved us about 40,000 yen on the overall cost of the trip.

Our first night was to be spent with Samaritan’s Purse at their new “Tent City” in Sumita city which is about an hour south of Kamaishi.

We proceeded smoothly but did have a little trouble locating the exact place as it was dark and we had never been there before.  The next day we were able to appreciate the cherry blossoms which were no longer out in Tokyo; they had already come and gone. It was a blessing to see them again.  The long blue box under the tree was storing the 30 boxes of Kitchen supplies that we would take to Kamaishi along with the kits we had already prepared.