In Kojima spring is in the air. Thursday is Children’s Day, the end of Golden Week. In their honor, homes fly carp pennants, families go on outings, and a particular variety of purple iris blooms.
The futons are aired out on the balcony, the clothes actually get dry in a day, and offices are closed. Brent and Sandy are introducing me to the special joy that is watching past seasons of The West Wing.
None of Brent and Sandy’s adult students are Christians although several of them join Sandy for weekly Bible studies. Nevertheless their interest and concern about what is going on in the Tohoku area is high. So high that they want to hear my news and stories. They’ve also been bringing small children’s books, toys and clothing to the Logos English School as donations. On Wednesday, Brent, Sandy and I sorted and shipped 8 boxes directly to the dojo for distribution.
In the afternoon I tackled the hundreds of pictures I’ve taken along with more from Paul, Beth, and Hannah Seelen.
Thursday we hit the road—OK, it was our bicycles and what we hit was a trail—the old narrow-gauge route northeast to Chiamachi Station and back—about 15 miles round trip. Sandy had never been that far on the trail, so with a picnic lunch and a rough map we made our way through the hills, bamboo groves, garden plots, pocket suburbs, and highway undercrossings, only having to ask directions a few times. Brent and Sandy plug along; I stop and take a picture, hurry and catch up; stop, take a picture, hurry and catch up; they thought it was funny.
So many beautiful homes and gardens. Our lunch stop is next to the Cha Cha Store. It’s like 4 stores in one and in one corner is the donut shop, except in the USA you normally don’t buy pizza slices at a donut shop¬—I decide to try a purple bean paste sweet potato bread.
Why, you might ask, do you need “donuts” when you have a picnic lunch packed? I say some questions don’t deserve an answer. So as were packing our trash for the return ride, Brent says he has a confession to make. What—he finally feels remorse for his rude remarks? No, it turns out while Sandy and I were in Hiroshima Tuesday, Brent rode here by himself, just to make sure he could (being legally blind, and having a pacemaker and all), and now we find out he was just playing along while we were asking directions.
Jennifer’s 5/6 Osaka Team update is so encouraging. After helping a family clean out their house one day, the next day when the team returned, the trucks were clearing debris fromtheir block-—perfect timing. Better yet, when they asked why we were helping, Chad got to share about Jesus’ love for us. Then as our group was setting up the barbecue, the same family offered to help, and the end result was that 100 people were fed directly, perhaps double that when you consider the food taken home to other family members.
Friday, I meet some of Sandy’s adult students at their studio, and afterward, they serve green tea and sweets, but without the formal ritualized tea ceremony, thank goodness. I wash the windows at the English school, find out that I picked the very worst exchange rate day to cash in the rest of my traveller’s checks, try to label some more pictures, and meet up with our friends Paul and Stacey Herrington for more tea and sweets. We discuss their future plans after the baby and Japan mission work in general. My schedule is Sunday night back to Osaka, Monday morning to Tohoku for 10 more days before returning to the states. They ask me if I’ll be different after I go home, and I hem and haw and say I hope so, but I’m still not praying enough, and I’ll still have to deal with stuff, and projects, and money issues when I return. Learning to make people a priority, and maybe reverse culture shock too.
But my issues have nothing on what the people in Tohoku are facing. What happens when the assistance ends, and the aid groups stop delivering rice, and your relatives get tired of 15 people living in one house, and the building where you used to work and maybe even your boss are still gone, and you can’t rebuild your own house for whatever reason, and the familiar neighbors and shops and schools are gone, and maybe the only jobs are 50 miles away in a strange city. . .and you have no one to talk to? What then? Yes you survived, but now you have to figure out the rest of your life.
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