Wednesday April 20, 2011 A Big Team and Small Miracles

Maya came in again this morning and helped Glen and me sort the children’s clothes and put big signs on the boxes, while Julie helped Beth hang the adult clothes on the new rack. The six of us started out and at the Ishinomaki McDonalds met the “dirty dozen,” who had come up from Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe. Sorry, I meant “baker’s dozen.”

Charlie Seelin and Teresa and Collin and Hannah
Ed and Nan Jordan
Eric
Liz
Bob
Barbara
Otani San
Hiroshi Sato
Machiko
And Matt who came all the way from Hiroshima.

The number of people now filled 7 vans and a truck, so we split into two groups after going through the tunnel.

We went to the same locations we had visited Sunday and Monday which are about 6 blocks apart. We set up the tarps and supplies at the two places.

We noticed that people were getting tired of the curry stew, but were excited to see we had another variety of sauce, kind of like pasta sauce (I forget the name). We quickly ran out of kyuruti (cucumbers—sounds like “cuties”) and cabbage. By the time the line ended, of all the food we laid out, all that remained was a case of onions (we had brought 3).The clothes still went slowly from Chad’s new rack, but some people were looking for specific ages so it was good that we had separated and labeled the boxes. Several older people trickled in as we were loading, so we just asked what they needed and reached in the vans to pull them out. Maya went nuts with the old people and the box of scarves; she would reach in and find just the right one and put it around their necks for them.

Group A meanwhile, distributed to over 300 people, and found that the children’s toys were a huge hit.

After everything was packed up, we split into groups of 4 and just started walking the neighborhood, asking if there was anything we could do to help. Several of us actually found people to help including a request to remove a large shed lodged in someone’s patio door that we’ll return to tackle tomorrow. There was also a car stuck in the walkway, but we make no promises about moving cars.

During the debrief after the Osaka/Kobe group fed us dinner at the dojo, Teresa shared the following:
As group A was packing up, she asked a man if there was anything he needed. Chihiro was there and she told Teresa that actually that man was helping us. He is a neighborhood leader who checks on all the families and tells us what their needs are (ed. note: this is Aoki San, whom we'll hear more about later). He told Teresa and Chihiro that every day he gets up early and carries water up the steps to the third and fourth floor apartments in all six buildings if there are people that might have trouble getting their own. He told them only one thing he wished he had was a bicycle so he could get around and bring more things to people that needed them. Teresa thinks to herself I thought I saw us load a box holding a new bicycle on the truck at some point. They get hold of Bob who finds the bicycle and puts it together. When they were ready to take the bicycle to him at his apartment, Chihiro says we need to keep this low key—people in the apartments are always watching, and they might get jealous if they see someone got more than them. So Chihiro throws together a small bag of food to take attention off the bicycle, and they go just the two of them. The man sees them and comes down from his apartment, and he can’t believe his eyes and his wife looks down and sees it too and she can’t believe her eyes either. And Teresa tells him “we just want to help you help others,” so now he’s going to be able to do many times more than before.

Machiko and Liz shared that they found an older woman kind of standing by her garage a little hunched over, so they go and ask if there’s anything they can do. At first she declines (in that Japanese, not wanting to put anyone to any trouble, way), but Liz thinks maybe because Machiko was there, she finally says maybe just this few wheelbarrow loads of mud and junk needs to go to the giant junk pile. So after they finish that they see in her garage where the water came up about 4 or 5 feet and there’s the dirty water line on the garage wall and everything on the shelves below that is dirty or ruined and so they ask if they can help clean up the garage. So they start cleaning and talking and the lady is telling her story about the earthquake and how she told her husband it looks like we came through pretty good, and he says but there will be a tsunami, and she says but we’re like a thousand meters from the ocean. But pretty soon the water’s coming in anyway and she’s struggling up the stairs where she rests and then the neighbors are climbing off of their roof into her window and they all spend the night their because it takes till the next day for all the water to run off.

After she tells her story, Teresa asks if they can pray for her, and she says yes, and so they pray in a circle right there, asking God to bless her with strength and hope to keep going, and all of a sudden the lady is crying and tears are streaming down and they realize that this must be the first time she’s been able to cry since the tsunami hit over a month ago. And then as they’re leaving Teresa drops her glove in some dirty water and the lady laughs and they realize that this must be the first time she’s been able to laugh in over a month. And then they’re finally leaving and the lady says just a minute and runs upstairs and comes back with a new pair of gloves for Liz.

Otani San and Hiroshi shared that what they saw today was not anything like what you see on the news. This was kokoro (heart to heart) service for the overlooked ones and it was good that they had finally been able to get their hands dirty.