Dear Friends and Family,
It is early Monday morning and we are getting ready for week 2. We will work 4 more days on the Masu house and the drive back to Tokyo on Friday. We are hoping to finish the Masu house so the carpenters can begin restoring it soon. Today we will probably start digging out the muck and sludge underneath the house from the tsunami.
We had a busy weekend! Saturday we left Camp Morigo at 8:30 AM and drove back to Ishinomaki to set up for the Asiah concert. It took us most of the morning to set up the tents and chairs and picnic tables, etc. We went to McDonald's for lunch (you know...it was nice to eat familiar tasting food even if it was Mickey D's!). After lunch, we listened to the concert and then socialized (as well as we could) and served shaved ice (they put condensed milk on the ice with the flavoring...it is really good!!). We had a good turnout and everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves. After everyone was gone, we packed everything up. By then, it was dinner time, so we stopped for sushi. We have committed ourselves to try everything put in front of us, so we have eaten some interesting things like squid, octopus, sea urchin (not good), sea weed, and whale. We were tired by the time we got home.
There was no rest for us on Sunday either. We were on the road by 8:30 AM to head to a house church in Ishinomaki. With our group, there may have been 25 people there for church. The guest preacher was Portuguese and he had a Scottish/Japanese man translating for us. Throw in Americans and you have quite an International Church. The Church was very friendly and threw us a wonderful lunch after service. It was 1:30 or 2:00 PM before we moved on. From Ishinomaki we traveled north to Mimamisaruki to see some of the most devastated of cities. Mimamisaruki sits in a valley which pushed the tsunami wave into a smaller channel and consequently caused it to be much higher and more devastating (it swept over 3 story buildings sweeping away everyone that thought they were safe on the roofs). The destruction defies description! We have a picture of a train engine (the whole train car) that was swept down the street. Cars are piled up in massive piles. Buildings no longer exist. There was a radio station where a woman stayed at the microphone pleading with people to evacuate...she was killed and has become a local hero. There are memorials to her at the ruins of the building and bus loads of tourists come to pay respects and take pictures. They have also set up a pre-fab mini-mall where we stopped for awhile (I ate whale and chocolate cake). From there, we drove south along the coast passing through destroyed town after destroyed town. It became numbing after awhile. We ended the day at the Aeon Mall in Ishinomaki where we ate at the food court (much classier than our typical mall food court). Josh and I had ramen noodles and pot-stickers (much better than our ramen noodle packets). Watching the cooks make the meal was fascinating. We got home at 10:00 PM and I crashed.
Please continue to pray for us as we roll up our sleeves and get back to work on the Masu house!
We love you all.
Pastor Gary
It sounds like you guys have had quite the adventure with eating new foods. I see you didn't like the sea urchin. I'm curious to know what the whale tasted like. Also the church that you attended was it an official church or an unofficial church. I've heard from my cousin who spent a year in china(different country I know) that the only official churches aloud where ones for only people of other nationalities could attend, is this some what true here?
ReplyDeleteYes, we have tried many new foods! The sea urchin (Josh ate) was very salty and he found it unpleasant. The whale was fried and tasted (I know...it is cliche) like chicken. Ok, maybe fatty chicken, but we enjoyed it. I like the wasabi sauce...but eat very small amounts at a time.
ReplyDeleteJapan is very open about religion. Budhism and Shintoism are the main two religions and they are very entrenched. People feel they are betraying their anscestors and heritage if they leave the faith of their fathers. But churches are respected and can be very open and public. Both churches we have attended have signs and display crosses. Last Sunday we were in a "house church" but it still had a sign out front and a cross on the roof. We were the only "foreignors" in both churches (the rest were Japanese). It seems the tsunami has really opened people to the gospel and the incredible response of Christians to serve and help has softened many Japanese to consider Christ. I'm sure it is very different in China because of the communist government.
Thank you for your comments and questions! :)