Our last day with the Barkmans, we left around 7:45 AM to head to Iwate’s OMF bases.
We played Telephone Pictionary and 20 Questions in the car and stopped at a temporary restaurant in Kamaishi and ate pork cutlet or spaghetti—other items were too expensive. In fact, the meals were so expensive that we had to swap our lunch budget with our dinner budget. Now, we have 650 yen for dinner. If it’s at a kombini, it should be enough.
The nature on the car ride was beautiful. I have lots of pictures—I’ll update this with photos once I get a chance.
We got to Yamada-machi’s Ippo-Ippo (meaning step-by-step), a place to hang out for the people of the town, run by OMF, at 1:30 PM.
We had about 5 and a half hours in the car.
After a brief orientation, we took a look around the town while tracting to students that could come to our barbecue tomorrow.
Again, many photos were taken.
The devastation in the town was amazing. Everything was wiped out. The only things that have changed since the tsunami are the clearing of the rubble.
Yamada-machi is in the no-rebuild zone mandated by the Japanese government, so no non-temporary buildings are going to be built. It’s funny that so many things are without the title “temporary,” yet nothing material is permanent.
We had dinner at a place called Marumatsu—it was cheap and good. We actually ended up within the budget because the food was so cheap. Averaged out, we didn’t spend more than 650 yen per person.
I went kinda crazy after the food and was doing sit-ups, push-ups, and dead-lifts on Daniel and Chris. Oh, and crazy dancing, singing, and just being weird/myself.
We practiced songs for tomorrow’s church service, which we’ll have before the barbecue with the neighborhood’s youth.
Lights out is at 11—it’s already past that. Katie is going crazy with laughter relating to the lack of privacy in this place. A girl didn’t close the curtain to the girls’ area and Katie somehow found that funny. No, none of us guys saw.
Now all of the girl are laughing. It’s good that they’re enjoying themselves. This team has a phenomenal amount of laughter—it’s awesome!!!
Prayer:
- Kids to come to the barbecue tomorrow.
- Rest. The hard physical work is over—now we had hard mental and the spiritual work is about to get harder.
- The work of the McGintys, the OMF missionaries who have put Ippo-Ippo together and are currently managing a majority of the operation.
- Continued wisdom in doing what we do. We’re so-called “experiments” at Ippo-Ippo. It’s been only a week since it opened. If we fail, we severely impact the McGintys’ ministry negatively. If we succeed, it’ll prosper their ministry. So, I guess we also need
- Guidance from the Holy Spirit in general, but especially in interpersonal relations.