Thursday and Friday, May 12 and 13, 2011 Working Outside the Job Description

Thursday.

Down to four of us for the moment—Ian, Joel, and me plus Maya as our local guide/gung ho worker/cheerleader—so we finished ripping up the floorboards and shoveling the mud from the dirt under the floor at Yukari’s house near the tunnel entrance. Chad and Jennifer arrive late tonight, and another team arrives this afternoon. From Japan: Dan and John, and joining them from Huntington Beach: Joe, Steve, Ryan, Chris and Gary.

Friday.

At the morning devotional someone asked Chad how he happened to be in Japan. He said when he and Jennifer were first married they took a backpacking trip through Africa. It was on that trip, he explained, that their experience of God became real and their purpose came into focus. It was Africa they fell in love with and where they thought they would end up, but instead they came to Japan as English teachers and stayed.

Steve, Gary, John, and Dan drove to Kesennuma where their group wanted to concentrate efforts. Their evening report described pretty complete devastation. They could see how far the water had come, because only houses on the hillsides survived and even some of those were damaged. They helped some of those people clean up and met a lady whose beauty shop was gone, but what she really missed was her haircutting tools and supplies. Then she says wait, and goes to her house and brings back scissors and cut a couple of the guys’ hair and wouldn’t take anything for it.

We went back to Yukari’s house to put down some temporary plywood flooring, this time with the expert crew of Joe, Chris and Ryan (who knew that church and missions staff could build stuff). Tony and Mary Anne surprised us by dropping by—they were now working with the animal rescue organization Kinship Circle—and they were with a team filming stories of people and their animals and rescues and such. Also with that team were a couple of ladies, Jackie and Danica, who were not doing anything critical for the next few days and asked if they could help us. Well that was a question that needn’t be asked twice, so now we with reinforcements continued boxing dishes and cleaning while the plywood crew did their thing.

We brought our team’s circular saw thinking we could plug it in upstairs seeing as how we were told there was no power to the first floor because of the water damage. Well, the second floor was locked, so we go, “Maya, will you please call the homeowner”? So after talking on her keitai (phone) for a minute she says plug the saw in here, so I did and then I say see it doesn’t work and then she says “breaker” (her English is getting better) and walks into the kitchen and just like that we have lights and power and everything. So I guess they just turn it off when they’re gone for safety. By midafternoon the main room is done and we start ripping out the kitchen floor because the people said we could do that room too if we had time.

Jumping ahead, now it’s getting dark and Chad and Jennifer show up and now we’re really cleaning like practically polishing the one piece of salvageable furniture and mopping the genkan (entrance area) to a spit-shine all because Joe and the crew are absolutely not going home until the kitchen has a new temporary floor and the window ledge is clean to we can put the pots and pans back and a potted geranium they bought as a housewarming gift is prominently placed by the entrance. Well it’s eight o’clock before the tools are cleaned and the door is set (it doesn’t close per se) back over the entrance.

So Joel’s done enough and we deposit him with his J Help group, and the Southern California guys will be taking off in the morning after their much appreciated work.