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

Summer Break

Hello Friends and Family,

We hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the summer. We have August 2nd through the 13th as vacation time and we both go back on Monday, Aug. 16th. The students don't come back to school until Friday, Aug. 27th, so we'll have lots of planning and preparing time. And we have two more training days with the other AETs as well (18th and 19th).

Yesterday, we came back from a Bible camp in Hitachi. It's in a beautiful place - forest with tall trees, a stream, and cabins to stay in. It's a 10 minute hike from a parking lot to get out there. A team of Christians from Cordova, CA, came out and facilitated the lessons, which were themed "Vitamin C." Three C's - lessons: Created, Connected, and Chosen.

The camp lasted about 3 days. We enjoyed the people, the team work - like everyone making curry and rice together, and playing games. Now, they are working on some building projects for the rest of the week and also having some Bible studies with people. We had to come back right away though, because of my need to rest (Laura). I've had a viral infection for the past 3 weeks. It's my immune system attacking my joints, causing me to feel stiff and achy in most of my major joints. So, I might have to go to the doctor again soon if this pain continues. So, please pray for my body to heal. Thank you!!

Allen's pain in his lower back is slowly getting better and better. He has the pain from the surgery, and he was taking medicine 3 x a day, but now he's down to taking it once a day, so that shows improvement. Please also pray that he continues to improve to reach 100% (no pain).

We will start EBC training soon (English Bible Class). So, if you could also keep the Mito Church and AETs in your prayers as we prepare and start reading and discussing Scripture with Japanese people who are interested in practicing their English. Last spring, Allen and I finished up on a good note with our 3 readers and we've met up with them one time since then and we look forward to seeing what God is going to do through us to reach out to these three wonderful women. Two of our readers are Japanese women and one woman is Korean. They all are able to communicate in English, but this class gives them an opportunity to use their English and make relationships. Also, they know that we are Christians and that we want to share our faith with them, which they are perfectly ok with. They share their feelings and/or experiences with us and we all talk about that and relate it with the Bible characters' experiences and our own experiences. At times we've been able to get pretty deep and really enjoy talking with each other. And Allen or I always say a prayer at the end of each class.

So, please pray for our EBC class and for our health. God bless you all and take care.

With Love,

Allen and Laura

Good News!

Yea!! Halleluya! Praise to God! Allen's tumor is benign! The operation to remove the tumor and supposedly leave him pain free is on May 7th from 1:00 or 1:30 to about 3:30 (one hour surgery but longer time with the anesthesia). So, Allen and I and our church family here and coworkers are very relieved about this news. Please pray that the surgery is successful and that Allen can live pain free after it's all over with.
Thank you for your friendship and prayers.
Hope you all are doing well.

Love,

Allen and Laura

Finally Getting Answers about Allen's Pain

Hello Everyone,

Sorry again that it's been a long time. Hope you all are having a good year so far. We're enjoying starting up a new school year, which starts in April for Japan. A lot of changes happen in March and April. People get switched to different positions in their jobs, including teachers. Teachers may not know if they'll be at a different school even until the beginning of April. It's kind of chaotic, but it's how they do things here. I've asked some teachers if they wish they could stay at the same school for many years with the same grade, but they replied, "no." They just have a different way.

So, we found out like a month ago that Allen has a tumor and that's what's been causing his pain in his lower back for the last 6 years or so. After the biopsy, we still haven't found out the final results. The doctor has even had a conference with other doctors. It's been a difficult thing to figure out. We have a lot of hope and confidence that it's benign. We'll find out hopefully next week. We'll update our blog again as soon as we find out what the doctor says.

Please pray for us and for the doctors.

Love you all.

Love,

Allen and Laura
P.S. We picked up the new AETs last night. Eleven AETs went back to America and now we have 10 new ones and 1 more coming in June. Laura's mom is still here until June to help cover for the AET who doesn't get here until then. Lots of changes happening, keeping us busy and on our toes, but God is good and things are working out well and we are staying positive. :)

Wow, it's already February!

Hello Friends and Family,

Thank you to friends Kent and Sammie for posting your comments - it was good to hear from you both. We miss you all too! And hope to stay in better contact this year. One of our goals this year is to keep better in touch with our friends and family back home. Skype is really helping us to do that! :)

Hope you all are doing well. Life here in Mito, Japan, is going just fine for us. The start of the new year has been pretty good so far. We enjoyed the holidays and hearing from friends and family. Laura's dad came and visited Japan for a month and that was really nice. Allen went to America to be in our friends' wedding and saw his family. Allen's birthday was December 4th and Laura's was January 31st, so now we're both 25! Wow, we're a quarter of a century old!!

Laura got her Japanese drivers license at the end of January and will be able to start driving to school in March when we get a car from an AET who's returning to America. That will be really nice that she won't have to ride her bike everywhere. Allen has more energy and doesn't mind riding his bicycle everyday. :)

Good news...Allen had a good observation at his school last week. He and one of his 6th grade teachers had worked hard to prepare for it and it turned out well. It was an all school observation, so the Mito educational board members were walking through each class and Allen was observed team teaching with one of his teachers in a class that he says is his most challenging class, because the students tend to act up a lot and they don't seem to care that much for English. They did skits covering different lessons they've learned over the past years in elementary school. Afterwards the educational board member who is in charge of us AETs spoke with Allen about his good and bad points. He said he was really glad to hear the good she had to say and was relieved that it went well.

We still have our challenges everyday and we're still adjusting, but it's almost been a year now and we'll be here at least another year. God is good and He's taking care of us even with the little things as we strive to put Him first everyday. We'll sure miss Mom when she leaves at the end of next month. She's looking forward to being back with Dad and Drew and she misses home, but we've sure had a good experience together here in Japan. God is so good to have blessed us with this special time together.

If you are reading this and want to pray for us, you can pray that in this new year we will be used by God to cultivate our relationships here in a way that we can share God's love and help meet people's needs. This past year we've focused so much on our own needs as foreigners in a strange land, but in this new year we need to start trying to focus more on the needs of the new AETs who will be coming and on the needs of the Japanese people and our friends here.

Thank you and may God bless you all!

Love,

Allen and Laura

Merry Christmas! Sayonara 2009!

Hello Friends and Family,

Wow, can you believe that 2009 is going to be over soon?! We are about to finish another decade. Time just flies!

We just finished the 2nd term of school and now we both have 2 weeks of vacation. We had an early Christmas together at our apartment with Laura's parents and a friend of ours who also teaches English in Japan and he is from Australia. We had a really nice time opening presents together, snacking, talking, playing with Allen's new miniature pool table (or rather, watching him play with it!) and listening to Christmas music.

Allen left for Houston yesterday. He will be in our good friends' wedding and visit his family. I'm so glad my parents are here. We all went to Disney Sea together in Tokyo last weekend. It was a lot of fun! We went with our Japanese friend who teaches with my mom.

Tonight, that same Japanese friend, named Kanaco, is coming with us to the Mito Church to sing Christmas carols and fellowship. Tomorrow, we will cook and eat Christmas dinner with a couple women friends from church.

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season and a Happy New Year!
Please keep us in your prayers as we start our 3rd term in January. Our goals are to keep up good relationships with the teachers and students, to build on the relationships we're making inside and outside of the Church, to get our Japan driver's liscenses, etc, etc. So, we just want to keep stress to a minimum as we try to accomplish many things while keeping Christ at the center of everything. God is good. This must be basically the goal of all Christians in this coming new year. To accomplish good things while keeping Christ at the center of everything. What would we do without Him. He is the reason why we are even alive or worthy to be called God's children. Thank you Jesus, for living and for dying and then living again for all of us!

Love to you all!

~Allen and Laura

Shisashiburi!

That's Japanese for "Long time no see!" We have a computeer virus, so that's been making our lives a bit difficult, but at least we can still use the computer. I'm updating our blog on my mom's computer now, since our's won't let us into the blog website.

Our schools asked us if we want to stay for another year and our answer was yes! We feel really blessed to have this job and it's helping us pay our school loans off. We enjoy worshipping with the church on Sundays and meeting with the AET group on Wednesdays at the church building for dinner together and a devotional. It keeps us going each week to be able to look forward to those fellowship times. We've also been going to the church retreats, which have been great times to get to know each other.

Teaching has been going well as we've gotten more adjusted to the culture and how our schools work. We make an effort to learn the language by going to the Japanese class offered by church members once a week. We have a hard time making oursleves study on our own each week though. I (Laura) was proud of myself for studying at school after my classes a couple days ago.

Allen, my mom, and I will be cooking together tomorrow night and Saturday morning for the Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday.

Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving! We were recently challenged to be more active in our thankfulness, like doing something in return or using what we've been blessed with to help bless others. And we are all blessed in many ways. There are so many people who go without food, shelter, or transportation each day. Let's encourage each other to really be thankful for each little blessing we have and to realize that it's from God and that it's not just for our own pleasure but also for helping to bless others.

Take care and God bless!

Love,

Allen and Laura