Tohoku Trip 4 Post #1

This trip was different in a couple of ways.   One was that  we took a team member from our church planting team in Nagano Ken, Hitomi Wilson.  She bravely joined  two young guys from TBC, Justin and Kohki, along with, finally, but not least, my son Jonny (which explains the large number of photos that made it into my Facebook account).

Another different aspect of this trip was that we only visited the one location Ishinomaki.  However, some things never change and we did stop at the first highway stop on the Tohoku highway to  get coffee for our first break.

Our first project was cleaning at the Buddhist temple right next to the refugee centre where we moved to our second day.  Several cars had been dumped by the tidal wave on top of the graves and mud covered the ground under the floor of the temple as well as the unused plots. too.

In this picture we are bagging the mud from the unused lots. Removing the cars from the graveyard is going to be very difficult as a large crane is needed and there is not really the room for it there to operate.

One blessing from this day was working with some students from Nagoya. We became good friends and exchanged contact information.

Another new thing on this trip was the local Sukiya store was finally open so after work and a Japanese bath (again provided by the Japanese military)  we headed out for our evening meal.

It was good to feel clean and full, ready for a good night’s sleep.  Tonight would be another first as we would actually be staying in a public school evacuation centre with evacuees.  We shared the music room with other ngo volunteer teams.  Evacuees shared other school rooms, making a private place with the help of cardboard box dividers.  We went to sleep to get ready for an early rise the next day.