Another Reserved Blossom Viewing

Today was the day for my regular quilting class, the first of two in April. The cherry trees on the way were still not fully blooming, although more than on Sunday.

Sensei has decided that we (her students) should do something special for the victims of Japan's triple tragedy, so she has gotten together appropriate fabric scraps and on Monday after meeting for lunch together at a reasonably priced local restaurant we will walk together to Mama san to see the famous, ancient weeping cherry tree and then spend the afternoon making small fabric drawstring bags (kinchyaku) to send to Tohoku.

Interview with Field Director of OMF Japan

You can see an interview with Wolfgang Langhans about OMF's disaster response here:  http://vimeo.com/21503809

A Walk in the Spring Sunshine

After the 10:00 am Service I went for a walk with my friend Sachiko. The sky was bright blue and it was a bit chilly. The spring flowers are really starting to bloom. I will be posting pictures on Picasa  and will run them to the right as a slide show. Remember that if you click on one of the slide shows it will take you to Picasa. To see other albums, click on the "my pictures" tab.

The OMF Japan web site is being updated frequently with prayer requests and stories from the past two weeks. To get there click on the link: omf.org/omf/japan/

Tomorrow a team will leave from Ichikawa taking a load of donated items to the earthquake area. Several churches have collected things like new underwear for people who have lost their homes and even if they have clothes don't have water to wash them.

Full Day

Back to a three +-hour power cut this afternoon. Got two guestrooms cleaned and ready for occupancy and did a little work in the office before it though. Power came back on about 20 minutes before my Japanese tutor arrived so I was able to get the temperature up a little from the 11 degrees (C) it had fallen to during the outage. She brought a couple exercises in reading Japanese and answering questions/solving puzzles which were just difficult enough to make me want to figure them out. We also talked about the school where she now works, and a little about the relief efforts and OMF's involvement.

"For such a time as this..." keeps coming to mind.

Tomorrow's schedule from Tokyo Electric shows us due for our power cut starting at about 9:30 am so I can go to the office/Guest Home in the afternoon.

Today a team of OMFers traveled from Hokkaido to Aomori with the makings of a soup kitchen which they hope to get set up in an area where food has been difficult to get in. They will be working with a local Japanese pastor who can introduce them properly in the area where they want to work.

Sunday Afternoon Walk

My friend Sachiko and I went for a walk after church. The picture here is the only sign we saw of damage from the earthquake. There will be a new set of pictures running in the slide show (as soon as I can get it changed) of other things we saw as we walked down to and then along the river, to Satomi Park and Junsai Park. Everywhere we saw people walking and enjoying the early spring weather. Sachiko commented that the conversations of people we passed were centered on the earthquake.

Several people let me know today about the Samaritan's Purse delivery of food etc. for Sendai. I was really happy to know that they had coordinated with CRASH the Christian organization that OMF is partnering with in the relief effort on this end for delivery to evacuation centers, especially ones the government hadn't gotten to yet. The main problem so far is not that there is no food, but that it's difficult to get food from collection depots around Sendai into the area evacuation centers. Sendai was able yesterday to receive a supply ship at their port.

Read a report from one of our missionaries in Sendai who seems to be having the time of his life ministering and witnessing to Japanese people.

Read one comment that it would be good if people in developed countries made sure that missionaries who are already serving here were fully supported before just donating willy nilly to the general 'cause'.

Two OMFers doing some scouting along the coast to see where we should send a team, got government permission to get gas and to travel on the expressway rather than the back roads. It really pays to have people on the ground who know how things work here and follow accepted cultural procedures. Doing it the Japanese way is important for getting things done and being accepted.

Remember that if you want to look at the pictures more closely, click on the slide show and when you get to Picasa you have lots of options. You can even comment there if you like.