Thank you for buckling in with us on our most interesting housing journey.  The meeting yesterday with the agent representing the owner of the land that we are trying to buy did not go as we had hoped.  Our Asian Access (A2) business manager had put in a counter-bid to the original asking price.  Yesterday, their agent came back and said that the owner is not willing to budge from the original asking price.  This is pretty unheard of in the real estate world here (and why did they make us wait 3 or 4 weeks to come back and tell us they weren’t willing to negotiate the price?)  In addition, we think that we would also  need to pay for the official surveying costs, as well as the grading of the land that would need to be done.  Our A2 board member, Phil, made one more attempt to give a higher counter-offer, just under the original asking price, reminding the owner that we would pay cash and need to pay for these other things. We will see what kind of reply we get.

By the end of the night last night, after putting kids to bed and getting ready for another school week, we were somewhat discouraged as we processed this recent turn of events.  We really thought that the Lord was opening up the door to this property.  I finally have really had peace about building a home;  we both love this location.  Those who have come and prayed with us have also had different confirmations in this direction.  But the non-budging owner has mystified us.  We don’t know if he’s trying NOT to sell this to us for whatever reason;  we could speculate many things.  But the door doesn’t feel wide open anymore.

So we are back to asking for your sustaining prayers.  If this is the path that God has us on, we would really love things to move along so that when we come back from our short U.S  home assignment in late August there would be a home (even if unfinished!) that we could move into.  At this point even if things move along that may not be possible.  Coming off of a really tiring week, my heart is a bit weary with the prospect of still numerous moves up ahead.

This morning a hymn from long ago popped into my head – the words have been reminding me of truths that I need to hear.

O God, our help in ages past, 
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home:

Under the shadow of thy throne,
thy saints have dwelt secure;
sufficient is thine arm alone,
and our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
or earth received her frame,
from everlasting thou art God,
to endless years the same.

A thousand ages in thy sight
are like an evening gone;
short as the watch that ends the night
before the rising sun.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
bears all its sons away;
they fly, forgotten, as a dream
dies at the opening day.

O God, our help in ages past, 
our hope for years to come,
be thou our guide while troubles last,
and our eternal home!

I haven’t not put any updates recently about our housing situation as much has remained uncertain.  We are very much enjoying the temporary housing, where we will stay until the end of this month.  After that, we really don’t know what is next, but neither of us are too worried about it (at least not today!).  It has seemed in this recent journey that God hasn’t chosen to tell us much of His plan until we absolutely need to know it.  There is one small apartment that we can use if it becomes necessary.

After the last piece of land that we were looking at fell through, we began to more seriously consider another piece of land that is more in the center of the Watahanoha community (the area where we want to live and where our kids are attending school).  When we had first visited it, there was a carpenter’s old hut on the property that had been messed up by the tsunami and made it all pretty unattractive.  When we went back, the hut had been cleared away and it was all open.

One morning I went prayer-walking around the property, and found myself getting really excited about it.  The shape is very unique- almost arrow-like.  Our home would face a dead-end street, which we like for children playing.  It is half a block from Watanoha train station, and just about two blocks from the elementary school that is being fixed up.  This is where the kids catch the bus to the temporary school, and in two years will be the school for our kids.  Many of the children walk right by the property on their way.

We have gone to the property numerous times over the past month to pray with different friends, and have really felt the Lord’s blessing and favor.  Last week the other three Be One women and I went prayer walking around it, and as we were praying in the middle of the property, my friend Beth felt like we should build an altar out of stone in the middle of the lot.  It felt right and good.

And, as we were praying, I looked down at my feet, and I suddenly noticed a tiny green plant pushing its way through a group of stones.  Tenacious!  And i remembered a special word from the week before that I had been given.  We had a wonderful teacher, Eddie Leo  from Indonesia come to Ishinomaki to share about the house church and building God’s body.  At one point we broke up into groups of two or three, and Eddie’s wife Rose was in my group.  She had a prophetic image for me — I was standing in a field and I was surrounded by rocks.  I didn’t know what to do with all the rocks.  And then when I looked down there was a small plant growing from out of the rocks.  She didn’t know what the image meant — and I didn’t either — until a week later.  And then, during that prayer time, I felt even more the God’s leading of THIS location, of THIS land.

Twice we have met the next door neighbors- they are a wonderful older couple with a 30-something year old daughter who lives at home.  They are hoping we move there.  Today as Chad and Keishi and Eric went to pray, they met the family across the street — the boy is in Olivia’s exact same kindergarten class!  And then Eric realized that the grandfather is a carpenter who he and Chad have been working with at different locations where we have been cleaning houses.  Half a block away is a family who has been friends with Be One over the past year.

TOMORROW (Sunday at 1 pm our time) there will be a meeting on this property between our Asian Access rep, Phil, and the owner’s agent and us.  We would love your prayers!  The price has been in negotiation and a decision will be made tomorrow about the price and the purchase.  I have not been excited about building a pre-fab home until this past month (rather I had been hoping to be able to find a “tsunami” home that we could fix up and move into) –but  I have become  really excited about this location and anxious to see all that God wants to do here.   Thanks for praying for us through all of this!  We will let you know, but wanted to ask for your prayers if you read this in time.

There have been so many stories on my heart and mind;  I realized by sharing them here with you my (reader) friends I am able to somehow process better what I am hearing, as well as helping to not forgot the experiences of many a year ago.  But we have been really busy with guests, volunteers, and events and the stories that I am hearing daily have been accumulating on my heart.  I will try and write some of them out in the days to come — these stories honor the bravery of many and allow us to in a small way understand the pain that is bulging this whole region.

For now, I will just share about two rituals from the past two days.  Yesterday, I went to my first funeral in Ishinomaki.  It was for Mrs. A., who was killed in the tsunami.  Eric and a number of teams helped clean out Mr. A’s mechanics garage and then their home upstairs;  I have had the privilege of getting to know he and and his 21 year old daughter since we moved here.  On Saturday, we went to see the cherry blossoms together;  then on Monday we dressed in formal black clothes and went to remember.

Mrs. A. was the vice president of a bank in Onagawa (see previous entries and the video depicting the hugeness of the tsunami there).  It is likely that when the tsunami warning came, they all went to the roof on the four floor to wait it out.  It was not expected to be very high, so they all thought they were safe.  In reality, none of them were.  The tsunami rose three times higher here than most places, soaring to close to one hundred feet.  It slammed apartment buildings onto their sides.  Half of the town perished that day.

They never found Mr. A’s wife’s body, so he continued to put off having the funeral.  But he told me last Saturday that it is finally time;  he wanted to do it while the cherry blossoms were in bloom.  The tree in front of the Buddhist temple where the ceremony was held was absolutely magnificent.

I was so moved by the sharing;  two of Mrs. A’s close friends went up to the photo of her at the altar and read letters to her, sharing their memories, their regrets, their pain.  One of the friends said, “Now that spring is here with the cherry blossoms I can only feel sadness because you are not here;  I wonder if it will always be so?”

At the end of the very long Buddhist ceremony, in which we were all sitting in proper Japanese style on our knees (Eric said he had to sing hymns over and over in his mind to keep from dying!), we had a chance to greet Mr. A. and his daughter T.  I hugged her, and just told her she is not alone — that we will walk with her through this.  Her loss is so huge.

Tonight, we celebrated the sixty-first birthday of a dear member of our community, Mr. T.  He is one of the community leaders of the series of apartment buildings where Be One has done a great deal of its outreach;  he continues to help through his influence and his many contacts.  His wife has had a serious illness, and he has had a great deal of pressures on him.  It was so much fun for our Be One team to come together after dinner and give him a cake, presents, words of affirmation.  He said it was the best birthday of his life.

When we were driving back from yesterday’s funeral with him, I asked him how many funerals he has attended since last year’ s tsunami.  His answer blew me away – over thirty.  Can you even imagine?  Thankful for days of remembering, thankful for days of celebrating.

Today we really began to believe that spring has come to Ishinomaki.  I finally shed my long silk underwear and double wool socks (seriously- today was the first day!) – and Owen is saying he wants to wear short-sleeves tomorrow. We’ll see about that.   The cherry blossoms this week have appeared, and the daffodils are popping up all over.  Here is the beautiful azalea that steals the show in our backyard.  Thankful for God’s gifts of beauty and change in our lives.

We are trying as Be One staff to take off Mondays.  This afternoon Eric and I took our two younger kids driving for several hours,in which they both slept and we documented  in photos some of the areas that still very clearly show the remains of the havoc reaped by the tsunami over a year ago.  I have found myself over the past month almost getting used to the torn-up neighborhoods that surround us.  I don’t want to stop seeing these homes as what they really are — each a tragedy that has left many individuals  without family members and/or homeless.  One of our Ishinomaki friends reminded us yesterday that it is can be painful to hear volunteers celebrating how they have finished cleaning out a house and been able to throw away all the debris… she said, “That was our lives.  That debris was all that my grandmother had in this life.”  I need to keep remembering, or re-remembering.

And we hope, that as time passes here, we will be able to mark the progress in areas where precious homes that were wiped away are slowly being rebuilt;  communities brought back to life.  Here are some photos, and one story that is sadder than words.

From the other side, you can look through the house and see one of the many trash dumps that surround Ishinomaki.

That trash dump — there are just massive amounts of trash being sorted and piled.  Different prefectures have made commitments to come to the worst-hit areas and take trash away to their prefectures to help ease the load.  Be One is making many trash runs each week as they clean out homes, apartments, and yards that are still filled with unusable waste from the tsunami.  We now are required to have permits from the city office for each trash run, which makes it all a bit more complicated.

Then- a very bizarre sight.

This is a 35-foot tall fish-oil tank that was swept over 1000 feet by the tsunami.  Years ago it had been painted to resemble a can of whale meat, and had stood in front of the Kinoya seafood processing company.  It is still where the tsunami dumped it a year ago — between two lanes of busy traffic.  I hope that the city leaves it here as a memorial.

There are still many places around the area with piles of destroyed cars.

What struck me with this apartment building – it was at least two kilometers inland – but even the second floor was destroyed by the waves.

And then the blotches of land where the homes have all been razed – except for one here or there.

And a few more scenes from within a mile or two of our home:

If a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami were not enough, there were fires caused by gas leaks that swept through communities.  I met a mom in the supermarket the other day whose daughter is in Annie’s class.  Their home was completely obliterated by a fire that followed the tsunami.  This is a school that was destroyed by fire, as well.

And then we drove through the city and began driving along the river that runs its way between the ocean and the city.  This was one of the first places where Eric and his colleagues had gone the week after the tsunami to look for pockets of communities in need of water and supplies.  The photos at that time were horrific.

As we started out the drive, there was nothing to be seen of the tsunami damage from a year ago.  Much had been cleaned up;  it was quite a beautiful drive for awhile.

And then we came to the bridge, that led us over to the school.  This is a small town called Okawa, about four kilometers inland from the sea.  One third of the bridge had been washed away in the tsunami (apparently by a 3-ton fishing boat that struck it hard at that time) – you can see the repairs that have been made;  and then in the following photo what is left of the bridge still remains in the riverbed.

We drove across the bridge, somewhat dreading what we were about to witness.  This is what is left of Okawa Elementary School.

I have written in a previous blog about this school;  most have heard at least parts of the tragedy that marked most of the students and teachers of this Ishinomaki school.

After the most frightening earthquake hit the small school, the 110 students and teachers made their way per protocol out onto the playground of the school, where they lined up.  Parents were sent a message to come and get their children (every year we have had a practice pick-up time like this in the case of an actual emergency;  the students stand in line by class, the teachers have a check-list, and the parents come, go up to the teacher, who checks off the name, and the child goes home with the parent).  On this day, some parents did make it to pick up their children, but most did not.  The tsunami warning came in, saying that a major tsunami was coming.  It is unclear if the teachers thought that they were safe being so far inland, did not want to stray from their perspective of protocol, or didn’t think it was safe to climb the very steep hill behind them.  (Apparently there were numerous pine trees that had fallen down, making the climbing really treacherous).

Most of the staff and children were told to stay in formation on the playground.  They waited out on the freezing cold playground for 55 minutes.Some have said that the staff were arguing during that time about what the best thing to do.  I’m sure none of them could have imagined…. And then the tsunami came.   It first came from the river, and then shortly after that came across the river banks/fields.  It covered almost the entire school, up to the roof, and flooded the whole area.

Only the 26 children whose parents came quickly to pick them up, and the eight children and one male teacher who had attempted to climb the hill were spared.  One little boy shares that the tsunami completely buried him in mud.  He kept calling out for help, and finally another fifth-grader also on the hill came to help him, despite having a broken arm himself.  This boy has done numerous interviews with his father, but tragically his mother, grandfather, and little sister did not survive.

Seventy-five children and ten teachers died on the school grounds.  According to several news reports, one of the male teachers who survived later committed suicide.  As Eric and I were reflecting, he said that if this had happened in the U.S., that teacher would probably have done the speaking circuit.  In Japan, he committed suicide.  It is all too, too sad for words.

Today there are many memorials, flowers, altars in a central location in front of the school.  During our short time there, a number of cars with other visitors came and prayed in front of the altar.  (One humorous side note:  Eric thought it was best that I not take pictures when I got out of the car, so I obliged, until I saw a group of priests with shaved heads  in front of the altar praying and chatting while one of their group stood in the background taking pictures with his iPad2!  I went back to the car and got my camera).

There was a very stunning granite statue of a mother and child, bundled up in wool clothing, that had been commissioned and placed there in October.  It took the artist six months.  At the bottom of the statue it is written, “Ko mamori” – protecting a child.  I stood and stared at it for a long time, watching the wind beat the fish kites that waved around it.

Yesterday was an open classroom at the kids’ school, so both Eric and I had a chance to go and watch our kids and meet different parents (as well as sit through a long and boring PTA meeting!).  It was really encouraging, both in terms of how our kids seem to be adjusting and making friends, and the openness of the moms that I talked to.  I am on the brink of making friends with several of them.  Annie had her first play date earlier this week, and I had a chance to meet that friend’s mom and several others who live in the same area.

In Owen’s class, all the kids had to go up in front of the class and read part of a story aloud with two other members.  I was nervous for Owen – reading in Japanese is not easy.  But he surprised me with the degree of fluency in his reading!  his teacher later asked me if I was impressed and commented on how well he did.

I think that we had sixty or seventy people crammed into the Be One house tonight.  It was insane, and lots of fun.  A team of nine from Osaka drove through the night last night (and they are leaving tomorrow morning) to work up here for the weekend.  They spent the day cleaning out a tsunami-hit apartment, and cleaning out a shed that had been filled with tsunami water but wasn’t opened for a year, until today. Oh, the smells

Most Saturday nights we do a community meal, inviting friends from the community to come in and eat together.  Tonight, several members of the Osaka team prepared and cooked the meal- it was great!  In addition, two men came who own a Japanese noodle factory in Ishinomaki… back in the early days right after the tsunami Be One volunteers were taking bottled water and food around, and they were able to get some needed supplies for their family.  Tonight, they brought a bunch of their yakisoba noodles, and then ran out to the store and bought meat and veggies and made it for us all.  It was great!  I guess that Ishinomaki style in part involves serving cooked eggs on the top.

We also made takoyaki, or octopus dumplings…. There were a bunch of junior and senior high girls who came, and enjoyed helping out with the cooking.

There was M., a sixth grade girl who I sat with for awhile.  I was so happy to meet her because she is going to the same school as Owen and Annie, just a few grades older.  I asked if her mom had come to the open classroom yesterday, and she said no, because her baby brother had just been born two days before (on Olivia’s birthday!).  No way – that is such cool news!  I was excited for her.  I asked if she has other siblings, and then she shared that her four-year old brother had been killed in the tsunami.  I felt the breath go out of me.  I think she was glad that I knew, but I realized that asking about family members in this town is not a “safe” question.

She had come to the party with her aunt, who worked at a volunteer center and lives in a nearby apartment.  I spent a lot of time tonight with these two, and look forward to building a friendship with her family.  Although she said that they have enough clothes for her special little brother, they don’t have a lot of supplies like a car seat, baby stroller, etc.  We are going to see how we can help.  Their home was destroyed, so they are living in an apartment in the downtown area.  Her aunt makes these amazing lunches for kids, in which the different foods make characters.  I’ve asked her to teach me some of her tricks.  Looking forward to building on all of these new friendships.

The last few days have made me realize that from a vanity point of view, I need to change two things for life up here:  1) my hair style, and 2) my mascara.

For the hairstyle, this picture says it all:

It is windy here most of the time.  Longer side bangs and layers just don’t work.  Need to rethink that.

For the mascara – I have always been, like my mom, an easy cry-er.  If I walk by a wedding going on and don’t know anyone, I am prone to get a little teary-eyed.  The last few days I have had the deep privilege of being invited to share the pain of others, and the tears – and the mascara – have run.  Here are two special new friends that I would like to share with you.

Mr. K.and his wife are moving in with their sister, who lives next door to our temporary home here.  He had asked Eric if a volunteer team could help take out the cement wall that had been splintered by the earthquake yesterday.  On Friday, a team of volunteers from Tokyo came over with Eric and spent the morning take out the wall.  here is Eric working on it:

After we finished, his wife and sister brought out hot coffee and lots of treats.  When I showed up with Ian, they took him inside and played with him while I was outside talking to Mr. K.  He asked me if I’d like to see pictures of his home, and returned shortly after with a file of pre and post tsunami photos.  He and his wife had lived in Onagawa, a coastal town that was pretty completely ravaged by the tsunami.  He showed me photos of his lovely home before the tsunami, and then the approximate place where his home had stood after.  It was heart-breaking;  I could not help but cry.  It is one thing to see a photo of a town filled with wiped-away buildings;  it is another to have a dear, dear man point to a small point on that picture and realize that this destination had been their home in the world.  I was thankful that they had survived, but cannot imagine what that day and those following were like for them.

He so wanted us to see  and to believe how beautiful his town used to be.  I absolutely believed him!

He and his wife have been living in temporary housing for the past year, but at the end of this month will be moving in with his sister, next door to us.  Since Friday, they have been so so kind to us.  Today his wife went to city hall and came over with the one-year daily trash calendar for me, and then walked me to the different trash stations.  They are our first neighbor friends!  I love it that we can help them, but that they can help us as well.

The other areas came about an hour after this, when I was asked to be at a lunch being sponsored by Ssamaritan’s Purse (SP).  They had asked seven or eight home owners where they have been working to come to Be One and meet some of us who are now living in the area.  When had a fun time of making sushi around small tables and sharing together.  Before lunch, I sat with a very beautiful woman, Mrs. T., who owns a massage parlor in one of the hard-hit areas.  SP has finished fixing up her home, but she later shared that she cannot move back yet.  She said that she and her daughter had been home when the tsunami came, and that the memories of the bodies floating by still haunt them.  We were thankful though for the friendships that developed around the table with her — Eric and I need to head over there sometime soon and support her massage business!

During and after lunch, I sat with several other ladies.  One shared that she had her husband spent the five days after the tsunami living in their little car with their toy poodle in the car as well.  They didn’t have food, but managed to survival somehow with what they could.

Mrs. K. was also at this table.  She had come to Japan from Korea twelve years ago, but speaks great Japanese.  She has a japanese husband.  She started to share with me how she frequently has heart palpitations when she gets in the bath. Last week, she had immense pain and thought she was having a heart attack.  She called 911 and was taken by ambulance to the hospital.  The doctor said she was physically completely fine.  She had an MRI done and it came out normal.  She said, “I guess the problems are just in my mind.”

What was hardest for her after the tsunami was her cat. She thought her cat had been washed away in the tsunami, and was really sad.  But then a month or so later her husband saw the cat nearby, but when he called the cat’s name, the cat ran away.  She is haunted by this.  “Why didn’t he come home to us?  Was it so terrible that he lost his mind?  Does he blame us for what happened to him?”

There were no easy answers.  After talking for awhile, we asked if we could pray for her.  I opened my mouth to pray, and the only thing that came out was – sobs.  I was filled with such grief and sadness for Mrs. K.  My Japanese partner ended up praying, and it was incredibly healing for all of us.

Mrs. K and I have talked on the phone several times since then.  She called me on Sunday afternoon to tell me that she had found a church near her weekend job in Sendai that was “like us.” She was quite excited about it.  I pray that she will continue finding healing from the pain she has experienced, and that we will continue to be friends.

I know i need to find some smear-proof mascara.

It’s a privilege to be here.

Yesterday we received some pretty shocking and disappointing news – the land that we have been waiting any day to purchase has fallen through. Over the past two weeks whenever we have checked we have heard that everything was going along smoothly, so it was quite a shock to find out otherwise. Eric called and talked to the owner directly, who implied that the other agricultural landowners of the surrounding area had gotten together and decided to hold out and sell all the land together to a developer in the next year or so… We don’t really know what the real issue is – if he was upset that the price was negotiated so much, if he feels obligation to his neighbors, if he thinks he can get a lot more by waiting? But whatever, it leaves us without land to build a home on! We just heard yesterday that the drawings were nearly complete in the U.S. They will have to be re-done for a different property that has a different shape.
We don’t have a back-up plan at this point. There is another plot of land that we need to consider, but it is long and narrow and could make building a challenge. Since we started our children at the Watanoha schools, we now need to make sure that whether we buy land or find a home that it is within that school district…
We do know that God wants us to pray more. Now that the three kids are starting up school, I really want to begin prayer walking the area. Just this week I have felt more excited about the particular area where God has been calling us. Would you pray with us?
We still need to be out of this home by the end of May – even if the building had gone through it would not have been ready in time for that. So we need a “next” place… and a long-term place.

Olivia started Japanese kindergarten yesterday – it is her third year, but since we are new to the school they wanted her to go through the opening ceremony. It was a strange feeling to be in the auditorium with bunches of little kids and their parents and grandparents and realize that every single face was new to us. All part of starting over. When the school principal gave a speech, she broke down crying in the middle of it as she talked about the great disaster of last year and how hard it has been for everyone there, but that together we will work hard to raise our children well. She said there are 25 families from the temporary shelters sending their children to this youchien…

Today Annie didn’t want to go to school. I know there will continue to be many ups and downs in the path ahead. Hoping that I can please God by living a life of faith and not worry.