Thursday the 7th

Today was a late start and an early finish.  No complaints from me.
There were only enough people for two teams and there were two
pre-arranged work sites starting at 10ish each.  One team went to the
house of an elderly gentleman and helped move things, clean out the
back rooms and clean up mud.  My group went to an older ladies place
and helped clean up her garden and parking area that was covered with
silt (that sounds like too nice of a word for the mud mixed with oil,
sand and sewage that covers everything after a tsunami).  Her response
at the end of the day was, “Now I’ll be able to sleep tonight.  I’ve
been so worried about how I was going to get that all cleaned up by
myself”.
She had an interesting story as well.  She was on her way home from
work in Sendai on the train when the earthquake happened.  The trains
stopped working so she started walking home.  A friend came along in a
car and gave her a lift home.  She had no idea there was a tsunami
coming.  The rest of the neighborhood was evacuated by the time she
got home.  She was stuck on the 2nd floor of her house for two days
before anyone could come get her.   She said the tsunami started small
but she was too afraid to watch as it got higher and higher.  After
the fact I started wondering what happened to the friend in the car
who had dropped her off a few minutes earlier.
We actually got done by about 3:15.  That was the goal that we never
attained last week.  Now that we were actually aiming for 4:00 we got
done early.  At the church I got to briefly meet Nan Jordan, a ViBi
(video Bible translation into sigh language for the deaf) board member
and friend of Mark and Mary Esther’s.  She and her husband are up in
the area looking to help deaf people in the disaster zone in whatever
way they can.
When I got home, after carrying another 30 liters of water up the
hill, I found out that they had finally turned the water on.  We’re
not supposed to drink it for another couple of days yet, but thanks to
my labors the last couple of days I have drinking water to last for a
while.  I also have neighbors for the next 3 days or so and was able
to get assistance starting up the water heater.  Mark and I neglected
to go over that detail when he was up here because there was no water
to heat at the time.  I’m not quite sure what to do with myself.  This
makes life a whole lot easier.  Thank you Lord!
Quick addition almost 24 hrs later.  At 11:34ish I was awakened by an
earthquake and hung out with the neighbors for a few hrs until the
tsunami warning was cancelled.  Didn’t sleep too well after that.
Since I have no water or electricity (its also off at the Shiogama
church) I will head over  the mountains to Yamagata tonight instead of
tomorrow morning as originally planned.
I got to talk with my girls around 4:00pm my time, midnight their time. It was nice to be able to talk with them again.