Getting Started!

Well, it still does not sink in that we are here for disaster relief, because our work today was helping out at the home base here, but it was still a great first day!  We conferred and came up with an itinerary of sorts, then helped set up a house for others who will be coming through on future work teams and built some storage space for relief items.  I was Dave's assistant-he is a handyman.  I am not!  Check out Dave's blog for pictures of us working and a vide of me driving in Japan for the first time in 14 years.  I did stay in the right lane (which is the left lane!) but messed up a couple of times with turning the wipers on instead of my turn signal.  Dave's blog is sushieaters.blogspot.com

The most amazing things happened today in evidence of how small a world it is or maybe to be more accurate, how God orchestrates things behind the scenes!  This morning I found out that a group of about 15 people are heading up to Iwaki (where Susan & I lived and ministered for 8 years) to try to encourage the people and do some informal counseling at one of the evacuation centers for people displaced due to radiation.  We will be joining them!  One of the ladies from our old church is going to bring a few people & meet us there. We had no idea we would be going to that town before coming.

The other interesting thing is that I met the brother of one of my good friends and a church member at FBC back home-Steve Gilbert.  His brother, Andy, is a missionary in southern Japan with another mission agency, but has been coming up for relief trips and is now preparing to relocate to the Sendai area to begin a permament outreach there. He came by to confer with the leaders of Mission to the World & we will all be going up to the same general area the first of next week!  Amazing, huh?

Well, it is almost 7:00 at night and I am pooped!  If you did not check it out yet, check out the story that Hannah Horne did for us by clicking here