Fall Approaching

Hello Everyone,

It's been a hot and humid summer! Laura got pneumonia and was in the hospital on antibiotics for 2 and 1/2 weeks. She's back to 100% now and feeling well. Thanks to all who prayed!

We took a trip to Nikko, which has a famous temple and waterfall. It was really beautiful! It's a 3-hour trip by train. We stayed at a Christian hostel. It was really nice and the people were so nice.

We went on a trip to Ishinomaki to help with the disaster by cleaning up an apartment complex - that was in June. Allen will go back to Ishinomaki this weekend. Laura will stay in Mito and attend her small school's sports festival and go to some singing concerts at the famous Mito art tower wth some of her English Bible Class readers.

We are so ready for fall to come and bring some more comfortable weather. But we are a little nervous as November approaches, which is is when we are to make our decision to stay another year or not. Please pray for us as we are still trying to decide which is better. Our minds just keep going back and forth as we weigh the advantages and disadvantages. But we are leaning towards one direction. We'll let you know our decision when when we make our minds up for sure.

Take care and God bless you all!

Love,

Allen and Laura

Summer's Going Fast!

Hello Friends and Family!

Be full of joy in the Lord always. I will say again, be full of joy.

Let everyone see that you are gentle and kind.

The Lord is coming soon.

Do not worry about anything, but pray and ask God for everything you need,

always giving thanks.

Philippians 4:4-6

Our Daily Lives

It's been a while. How are you all? We had our 3rd year anniversary on July 12th, this past Tuesday. Yeah! Wow, it's amazing that it's already been three years. Time really goes fast. It's been a busy and adventurous three years too. We've lived in Japan for almost 2 1/2 years now. God has blessed us with a lot of great relationships here.

We're surviving through a very hot and humid summer. Granted it's not as hot as Oklahoma right now (over 100 F). It's been like 34 C and very humid, like 60% humidity, which means everyone is just wet with sweat. After a while you get used to it, especially when we have to live with it outside and inside. I was so happy when my vice principle decided to turn on the air conditioner in the teacher's room today at about 4:00 pm. The Japanese people think it's unhealthy to go from hot to cold or vice versa, so they like to keep the outside and inside about the same temperature. Which, I do see the truth in it - going from one extreme to the other, but surely there's a happy medium... But most places, including people's homes, do have air conditioners, but they are only for one room. They don't have central air and heating like in the states. The schools have windows for every room, which they keep open in the summer and run fans in each room, so that does help a lot.

We have our AET summer training the last week of this month and another 3 days in August. This first term's classes are almost finished. Most of us have finished teaching English for this term, so next week and anytime that we're at work during August, we'll be preparing for the fall term.

We are planning to visit a few places in Japan this Summer break - Osaka, and possibly Kyoto and Hiroshima. We also plan to help with the August camp session for Hitachi Bible Camp. And we will get together with one of my co-workers at her house. She's going to show me how to cook some Japanese food. I went to her house once before and we had tea and talked (using English and Japanese). She's very kind to me at school. She's a teacher's assistant for one of the 2nd grade teachers.

Recent Happenings

Two special ed students got lost at Allen's school and Allen found them by himself! They had wondered off the school grounds and Allen found them across the street. All the other teachers were looking farther away, but Allen decided to look around the school grounds. One of the boys popped out from a bush or something and cried out to Allen, so Allen jumped the fence and calmed the boys. Then he called his school, and they sent another teacher to go pick them up in a car. I was so proud of Allen, and when I saw the boys reunite and cry with a teacher, it made me cry too! I had gone to meet Allen to go out for our anniversary, and there he was, my man, rescuing people. That's just what he's good at. :)

I (Laura) got an intestine/stomach infection and had a high temperature this past Monday. The doctor said it's been going around. I got medicine and I'm ok now, but now I have a cold, which is making my asthma act up, so I'm struggling to breathe a little, which is really irritating. So please pray that it won't lead to anything bad, but that it will pass. I'm trying to just trust God with my health and not worry, but I tend to get paranoid and worry too much! It's better to be safe than sorry: I've been to the doctor twice this week! Maybe I'll go again tomorrow just to say "hi." :)

Disaster Relief Work in Ishinomaki

Allen has been to Ishinomaki two times now - once for a week and then another time for a weekend. I've (Laura) been once so far (for the weekend trip). The church as sent out several groups on relief work starting in June. There's a team of 4 people who are leading the groups out each time - usually one or two of them go with the group. They know all the information for who we need to visit and where to meet for the next work site and how to get there. And this team of 4 also organizes the donations given to the church. Volunteers also help them with organizing and packing those donations. They've taken food, clothes, toilettries, vitamins, and things like that.

My (Laura's) experience for that weekend was really amazing. Allen was with me too. There was 9 of us - some of us AETs and some of us Japanese people from the Mito church. We met up with a relief team living in Ishinomaki, and we all went to this apartment complex to clean out all the stuff that got destroyed from the tsunami. The upper rooms looked like they had been cleared out already and maybe not as bad as the ones below. But this apartment complex was right there by the water, so it really got plowed into by that tidal wave. The building was not leveled, but it was destroyed enough that everything was a complete mess - dead fish, sea weed everywhere, furnature and refrigerators filled up with sea water, tons of broken glass everywhere.

So, we shoveled everything out - into organized piles of glass, wood, clothes, and trying to save valuable things like pictures and children's school certificates and things that were still in tact. It was really sad to see some of those things - the pictures of who lived there. I wondered if they were still alive, if they were able to escape, or happend to be in a safer place at the time. I sure hoped so. The apartment owner needed everything cleared out so that he could clean up his property and give valuables back to the people who lived there. He really looked overwhelmed and sad as he walked around to watch us and help keep the valuables organized. We ended up finishing the job in one day, which really surprized us! We thought we wouldn't finish that fast. The owner seemed really appreciative. The two teams circled up and we prayed together after we were finished. By that point though, some of our people had gone to another place to do a barbeque in a town where everything was pretty much leveled and completely destroyed. Allen went to help and socialize with people at the barbeque, and I stayed to finish the job at the aparment complex.

At the end of the day, we had dinner and went to wash up at an onsen - which is a bath house. Those are everywhere in Japan. It felt really good on my muscles after all the hard physical work.

We spent two nights at the Sendai Church of Christ building, and we had Sunday morning worship with the team that we had worked with on that Saturday. There's a family that lives across the street from the church, who the relief teams have made friends with. I was so glad I got to meet the mother and her 3 adorable children. They are not Christians. They are a kind and beautiful family. The children actually go to the church Bible class/worship sometimes. I think they will become Christians one day - I just feel it.

Also, speaking of people I met there, I also met an older woman named Suzuki. She lives near those apartments we cleaned up. She was so kind to us - serving us food and drinks when we went to visit her. She's a widow and a woman who our church has made a relationship with. I think it's really interesting our our teams have made relationships with at least a couple widows from Ishinomaki, that I know of. God tells us it's very, very important that we take care of the widows and the orphans. God's been telling us that since Moses' time. There's something about it that really shows God's love. People who are so vulnerable and don't have anyone to care for them.

The day after we got back - that Monday, June 27th, I had a break down after school and just cried and felt down. I talked with Allen about how I just felt strange and exhausted. But after that day, I started feeling back to my normal self again.

Prayer Requests

*Please pray hard for the orphans and widows who live in Ishinomaki and other close by cities and that they will recieve love and care.

* Please pray that Allen and I continue going back to that area to encourage our new friends there and help in the way God leads us.

*Please pray that we will also be open to God showing us how to reach out to the people at our schools, at church, our friends, and to our own community.

Thank you for reading our blog. May you all be filled with God's richest blessings of peace, joy, and love, the greatest being love.

Love,

Allen and Laura

Since the Earthquake...

Hello Everyone,



Very short update of the year up until now:



It's been a good school year and almost over. The new school year starts next month, April.
This second year has been better for us in the sense that we've become more accustomed to culture and life here. We have many friends and feel comfortable in our jobs and enjoy the church work and Bible studies. There's been a lot of good things happening. We also enjoyed our trip to visit our friends Brianna and Tracy and Kayla in Korea over Christmas break.



Since the Earthquake...



So, the earthquake and tsunami have brought big changes in our daily lives here. Thankfully, we are south of all the really hard hit areas. We live in the Ibaraki prefecture, around 100 km from the huge disaster areas in the Fukushima prefecture. We are doing our best to take precautions and be safe, but we also feel safe enough to stay in our home here and continue working this week until the closing ceremony at our schools. We will take some days off for our spring break during the last week of this month (March). We want to be helpful to our neighbors, friends, church family, and coworkers.

The Japanese people have been so cooperative during this time. That night of the earthquake, Allen went to look for another AET at a nearby school and to check up on his school. There were people from the community staying at the schools because their houses were dangerous to stay in. One of the people at Allen's school was his Australian friend and her mother and father, who had come to visit. On his way back he fell off his bicycle and cut up his fingers. When he came back, our neighbor helped patch up his hand and fed him some food. Then Allen told his wife what happend. She had been resting in the car with Heather.



Friday, March 11



Allen was teaching his 6th graders and I was teaching my 4th graders when he earthquake started here in Mito.

Allen's story:

"I was just finishing up with my 6th graders on the 3rd floor. I was telling them how wonderful they are and how they are excited about English and make my job easy. I was finishing my goodbye speach to them, since they'll be going to Jr. High School. They surprised me and the teacher by performing a very good skit that day. I said goodbye and right as I was talking, we all felt this shake and I thought, oh this is the same as a normal little earthquake we get sometimes here in Japan. But...it kept shaking slightly for about a minute and then everybody started going under their desks and the teacher was telling everyone to get under a table and that everything would be ok. That's when I realized this was more serious. I watched everything just shake like crazy and felt like the building was going to crumble on top of me. Then the thought came to my mind that this might be the end of my life. The quake just got worse and worse and lasted about 5 minutes. We stayed there until the shaking stopped and I resisted going outside to be there for my studdents and teacher. After the shaking stopped, we all went outside to the playground. I saw a bunch of students just hugging each other and crying and even some teachers as well. Some parents were coming to get their children. I walked over to the first graders and saw one of my favorite students crying and yelling "onichan, onichan, onichan!" Her friends and I were asking her, "You mean, ojisan (grandfather)?" She said, "no, no, onichan!" So, she was calling for her older brother, who is in the 4th grade and was a distance away. I took her hand to go look for her brother. When we found him, she ran and gave him a hug and held his hand. It shocked me to see this emotion because usually Japanese people don't show there emotions like this, but I saw how much she loved and looked up to her brother, at least when there's a scary earthquake! As I watched her love for her brother, it made me cry as I thought about how important the people in our lives are. Those children taught me a good lesson. There was a lot of aftershock earthquakes and I just stayed and helped get the children safely to their parents and helped clean up and making sure the school was safe. Then my wife came early to pick me up. We had to wait a long time in traffic because the traffic lights stopped working. It took us about 2 hours to get home. It usually takes us about 10 minutes!"

Laura's story:

"I was just finishing up with my 4th graders and was supposed to have another class there in the English room on the 3rd floor of the school. As we were saying goodbye to end the year together, one of the windows started shaking and kind of suprised us all and then before we new it, everything started shaking and got more and more scary as things started falling off the walls and the building was swaying back and forth. Their teacher was really great about staying calm and telling them to just get down on the floor and stay away from the ceiling lights, which I proceeded to turn off and then got on the floor with them. I felt tears coming to my eyes as I feared the worst and then started praying as I realized I needed to trust in God to take care of me and everyone else. I prayed for safety and God's deliverance of the worst that could happen. The shaking stopped and there was an announcement saying to go out the playground and line up in classes. I went out with them and soon after there was another kind of big shaking, but not as strong and it stopped after less than a minute. I stayed there with the students and didn't really know what to think about what just happened. I went to talk with my school secretary, who said I should go pick up Allen. I felt bad leaving them and the mess that the inside of the school builidng. The traffic was bad, and we ended up getting home at about 6:45 pm. It was dark and we waited together with Heather in her and Brett's car, becuase our neighbors said it wasn't safe to go into our apartments yet. That night we did some clean up, mainly in the kitchen. Then later, our neighbors said it was safe to go inside, so we all ended up sleeping in our apartments that night. Some of the AETs drove around checking on everyone that night, which we were so glad to see them and find out how other AETs were doing.

Getting home after the earthquake:

When we got home it was dark, and our neighbor, Heather, was sitting in her car in a neighboring parking lot. She told us it was too dangerous to be in the apartment or in the parking lot with pieces from the roof laying everywhere. So, we waited there for a while in the car. When we entered our house, our dishes from the drying rack had fallen in front of the entrance and some dishes had broken. Almost everything had fallen out of our cuppords from the kitchen and the bathroom. Fortunately, our dish cabinet and our bookshelf didn't fall over or break. We stayed positive by saying that at least we don't have as many dishes to wash now! :)

Our Daily Lives Now:

So, the day after the earthquake, Saturday morning, we went to see the shape of the church building, which was a bit messy inside but fine on the outside. The central Mito area seemed to be ok and we ended up standing in a line for 2 hours at the grocery store to buy whatever we could, becuase we didn't know how easy it would be to get food from this point. We were able to get just some juice, tea, water, bread and ramen up to just 1000 yen, which is around $10. Our friend from the homeless ministry, Ebisawa, was walking around and we found each other. He actually has an apartment in Mito now, but he comes around and finds us at our apartment or in central Mito and we hang out together. He also has started coming to church weekly, and we are so glad about that. He was with us most of Saturday and visiting other AETs with Allen. We gave him some food to help him out. Then he came to visit us and helped Laura one day with her bicycle last week and then we gave him some food again that day. We love how we help him out and he helps us out - its a giving and recieving relationship we have with him and we pray for him to know God and that we can help him know Jesus through our actions and through the church.

Also, the gasoline supply is being rationed and there are long lines every day at the gas stations. Allen stayed in a line from 3:00 am to 9:30 am and got 3000 yen worth of gas.

School has continued here as normal. The students were out of school for 2 to 3 days, depending on each school, but the teachers and us when back to help clean up the messes in our schools, which involved broken windows and a lot of stuff that had fallen.

Electricity and water were off for a little while, but we've had that back for over a week now. Some other places north of here still don't have water, so they are trying to get water from other places, like we did for a few days.

We are boiling our water before we drink it because it could be contaminated or something. We recently heard that the milk now may be contaminated.


Radiation problem:

We know that they are trying to fix the problem at the nuclear power plant by cooling down the nuclear reactors, so that they don't get too hot and let out radiation. We keep praying out that and will evacuate from this location if they say it's necessary. But for now, the radiation levels are not endangering our health, as far as we have heard... We might post something from a friend later about the radiation.


Prayer Requests:

Please pray for us to do God's will for us while we're here. Some people, coworkers, have asked why we are still here, why we aren't going home to America during this time. We've told them that we believe that God has a reason for us to be here at this time. Unless things get too dangerous, we will go somewhere else, but for now we are trying to hang in there and just be available for help. We don't feel the need to bolt out of here now, not when God could use us in a great way to help others. We don't judge others for leaving, but we just feel like we need to stay. Everyone has different situations and must handle things in different ways.

Please pray for those hurting the most in Fukushima and Sendai areas north of us. Please pray for their relief and comfort as they have lost so many to this disaster. We hope that when the nuclear plant gets things under control that God will allow us to go up to those areas to help. But right now is not a good time, because we could just be in the way of everything going on now.


Visiting with Kent Hartman and the Obatas in Haruna, Gunma prefecture:

We came back last night from our weekend visit with Mr. Obata, who preaches at the Haruna Church of Christ and his wife Mrs. Obata. They were taking care of Kent Hartman during his visit to see the HIM workers (Helpers in Missions). That couple, the Herringtons, who are doing the HIM program, went south to stay with some friends. Mrs. Herrington is pregnant, so they rightfully want to be extra cautious about the possible radiation problem getting worse.

We rode with the Obatas and Kent as they were on their way back to their home from visiting and helping a children's home. So, they almost ran out of gas and we even waited in line for about 5 hours. We walked with Mrs. Obata to see if we could use the toilet at the gas station and then we found out that it has closed down and would open back up for gas in the morning. So, Mrs. Obata and Laura found a dark place in a corner to do their buisiness and then we headed out, hoping to make it home. And we did!! We made it to the Herrington's house and after a few hours of sleep, Mr. Obata went out to find gas, and he was able to get some that day. We had a good visit with Kent Harman about his experiences and talking about the HIM program. Then he left to go to the airport to fly back to America. The rest of Saturday we enjoyed playing soccer and badminton with some neighborhood boys. On Sunday we worshipped with the Obatas and other members of the church there. It was really beautiful there in Haruna and we enjoyed our stay.

Today is Monday and it's a holiday here, so we're off of work. We're just doing laundry, cleaning, resting and preparing for the week. Allen's calling a lot of people and we've been checking on the news and how other AETs are doing.

Thank you for reading all of this and for your prayers. We'll try to update again soon.

Love,
Allen and Laura