Yes, we're heading back to Japan again. Tomorrow morning we're leaving on another relief team trip to Ishinomaki and Onagawa. This time the team will be 4 of us: Gordon Jensen, Mike Harvey, the ever-wonderful Sylvia, and Yours Truly.
Gordon is a multi-talented Microsoft guy who has been to Japan before as a short-term missionary (up in Hokkaido with Tim Clark - small world!), and will be our lead musician. Mike is a pro video/TV guy who was on our previous trip a year ago, and he's going to be doing a bunch of video work this time too. This will be Sylvia's 3rd trip to the disaster area, and it will be my 5th trip leading relief teams into Tohoku.
It's been two and a half years since the earthquake/tsunami/and nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011. And yet, even though all the clean up is done, very little restoration is done, and many survivors are still living in temporary shelters.
So our primary work on this trip will be to connect with survivors and community folks in the general Ishinomaki area, and especially in the town of Onagawa. This is the place where cars were left on top of 4 story buildings, train cars tossed up on top of hillsides, the seaport dock level dropped under the water line, and 1000s of homes and businesses were totally obliterated.
I go back to Onagawa on each of my trips, and my heart always hurts when I'm there. Part of the pain is that so little focus had been given to Onagawa by the relief workers and ministry groups who were rapidly developing outreach in Ishinomaki.
But the good news is that our local ministry partners, Andy and Lorna Gilbert, who now have moved to the eastern side of Ishinomaki, are doing a lot of work in Onagawa. I'm really excited to be part of it on this trip, and to see what is happening and what the future plans are for their work there.
So stay tuned, and I'll try to keep this blog up to date as we go. Thanks for joining the trip with us!
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