Monday, May 16, 2011 Tears, Pups, and Gobo

This morning we reflected on how the glorious ministry of the Spirit gives us boldness to minister with unveiled faces (2 Cor. 3.9-20). We were about to break up when Ian says I think we need to pray some more—if we pray some more then we’ll have more time to do what God needs us to do today. So we did—for another 15 or 20 minutes we prayed and sang and read. I think sometimes we really do just put in our time—the “minimum requirements.”

The Seelens, Nancy, Matt S., Barbara, Liz, Anson, and Paul left for Kobe. Chad left to take Jennifer to the Sendai Airport. That left me, Ian, Scott, Jackie, and Danica.

The HiAce van still had food that the Orange County group didn’t give out Friday. We added coffee making stuff, stove fuel, toys and books donated from Kojima, personal hygiene kits handmade by a lady in the USA, and bracelets handmade by folks in Osaka. Filled the K truck with the overflow and picked up Maya on the way to the grocery store. To our onions and sweet potatoes, we added 2 grocery carts of produce plus natto (fermented soybeans), tsukemono, and curry stew. Then we headed out to Kitakami Cho, the village by the river. This was the first time to see the devastation along that river for everyone except Maya and me. Since it was also the first time I was the lead vehicle to that area, everyone for some obscure reason chose to let the navi (Garmin GPS) lead us instead. Distinct lack of trust in my opinion.

Did I mention that the K truck has no suspension?

Teruko, Beth’s obachan friend across from the post office, was there to greet us almost as soon as we stopped the cars. We gave her the first vegetables out of the cartons, and some sweets and a stuffed pink bunny for her mago (granddaughter). She asked about Beth, and kept hugging us and crying so that we thought we never would be able to go on to set up the distribution we planned.

Since we went to the bank last time I thought we might set up at the post office this time, but there were cars in that parking lot, and Maya, after talking to Teruko, says there’s a community center that we passed less than a block away. Well we set up and the first thing we notice is that the people are eager, almost desperate for the vegetables stuff we’d bought this morning. Over two months after the tsunami and still no stores nearby and many of them lost their cars. So we set up quickly and everything is disappearing quickly, but I say maybe we have time to get some coffee going. Got the little cookstove going, fill up the teapot with water and get out the cups and the single serve coffee and we wait for it to get hot and people are starting to leave, and we’re waiting, and Maya says there’s coffee, and I say wait it’s not quite hot yet, and finally a few obasans and ojisans that are left get some almost hot coffee.

An older person comes up having walked from the other end of town and we’re out of everything, so I go to the van and check just in case, and sure enough there’s one box we missed—a box of gobo. And everyone still there goes “ohh, gobo” and we give out all the long thin brown dirty roots. Apparently a rare treat.

The community center also houses the village fire truck and sitting in front of it is a little overweight dog. So we ask about the dog and the woman says during the tsunami she floated in the water holding the dog on her back like you would a kid until the water went down. The dog was overweight because with older people were staying at the center for the time being, she couldn’t leave. So Scott and Danica and Jackie took the dog for a walk.

Driving to the bank I’m on a mission to track down a teacher to promote some student to student exchanges with kids outside the affected area. But Sarah wasn’t there anymore, and walking by the house where they met her a few weeks ago, we saw why—it was not really habitable. Heard another dog barking and the five of us walk across a field of dried mud and debris. Maya helps Jackie and Danica ask a woman about the dog. Before the tsunami the dog hated people and barked all the time, but during the flooding it was trapped for 7 days among tools and bales in a garage/ shed and oddly when finally released its temperament had become quiet and friendly.

Finally found a student leader and a principal at the middle school and gave him my sister Sandy’s information (she’s a teacher) for exchanges.

At the rojin home we found Mina the girl who lived on the farm and introduced everyone around. Learned that only about 8 people were still staying there; the rest had found housing. We left them a tin of cookies.

Again this was the first time here for some of our team, so we continued to the river’s mouth to see the destroyed school and city hall and sea wall. We parked and walked across foundations wiped clean of any trace of life over toward the water. Maya retold the stories about the children and added some things I’d missed. The teacher that had tried to drive the children home in the bus was not from the elementary school, but a nearby kindergarten. Maya added that the water had reached the top (third) floor of the elementary school and the 30 something students that had survived from there were those who found floating objects to cling to. Some were found days later, dead, with arms still locked around some scrap of wood.

She remarked that a few days ago a father had come and sat in front of the school on his still-missing son’s birthday with a cake, asking his son, “when will you come back?” Before we finally drove away Maya says there are parents here every weekend poking through the mud and digging, hoping that they still might find their children.