Old Friends - New Places

Old Friends – New Places:

In March 2011, Emi and I experienced of the Great East Japan Earthquake from the safe distance of the mountains.  Our mission, Asian Access, has invested many great families to be of the healing presence in Tohoku. We’ll share a bit about several of them.

We went to Tohoku to see the Adairs and the Brown Family. Dan and Casi Brown have two adorable girls, who warm the hearts of all they encounter.  Seeing Geneva, and the Brown Girls play embody the hope we families desire to bring to Japan, and the joy serving as a family. The will be partnering with local Japanese churches to serve and multiply small churches in Northern Japan. They live in Rifu, and have begun hosting youth nights and prayer meetings at their house. A really solid family who are learning the culture and serving everyday.

R, A, and G enjoying
 lunch from Casi Brown

G and R doing language
 learning (also known
as watching Anpanman)

The next day, Robert Adair, invited us to join his church’s outreach to the refugees in temporary housing. In 2011, many of you supported a short term mission trip to serve in Tohoku.

It was a lot of fun to see Geneva serve alongside the adults from Shiogama Baptist Bible Church.  This is the home church of Robert and Roberta Adair,since 2012.  SBBC has hosted summer teams, and planted numerous house churches in the area north of Sendai. Robert invited Geneva and I to join him, and his Japanese ministry partners, Nozomi, Hikari, Otomo (yukimasa)-sensei and others.  We went to a kasetsu, or temporary housing unit, north of Sendai. It was near where EBLCA had served in Dec 2011, but this was a different community. 

They hosted kids games, sang some songs, did some story time, and played a game of tag.  There were about 12 boys and maybe three girls that came out for the activities. It’s a little chaotic, but life in the kasetsu is chaotic. 

Near the end of playtime, Robert got the popcorn machine going, and of course the whole community can smell the popped goodness.  These kids who may or may not have been listening before, were SUPER attentive now.  Hikari and Nozomi got them to behave and passed out ‘shio-battah aji’ (butter salt flavor) or ‘karamaru!’ (carmel corn).

Geneva from her
"HAPPY POPCORN TIME"

There were some little old ladies sitting in the community center room nearby. They poked their heads out to ask for the pop-corn, but the little boys were definitely not going to give up their bounty.  Geneva and I went into the room and passed small bags to the ladies. Geneva gave a deep bow, and a ‘dozo’ (please have some) to the women. She sang a couple songs, and then busted out her Japanese songs catalog.

She made quite a few smiles.   I think the little guys in the community probably get yelled at for being noisy from some of the ladies (not unlike myself at church when I was a trouble maker). However, the women hadn’t seen us before, and asked where Geneva was from. Yukimasa sensei shared that we were a missionary family from Japan that would be here for the next three years. The women were surprised that we would come as a family.   I think they’ve gotten used to short-term teams coming and going.

Sensei talked with them some more, and explained that it was a loving God that called us to serve. While we aren’t in that community everyday, I see how God uses Geneva to open up new opportunities.

And THEN…

After we cleaned up from 5 hours at the kasestu and clean up. Robert told me that we were going to go to a field nearby to help a SBBC contact start his community garden.

In Japan, and Tohoku especially, many families have small gardens.  This rural area of Japan grows many of Japan’s vegetables, and produce, as well as the many fisheries of the coast.  Post tsunami, many of the residents miss growing their own vegetables. A SBBC member got a plot of land to be used for the members of the kasetsu to use as a community garden.

Well, when we showed up to the plot, it wasn’t a small plot of land, but a WHOLE plot that could fit a sizeable house. The plot wasn’t level, so they wanted our help moving dirt to level the garden….by hand and simple tools.

Robert, and friends had a good attitude about it, as we all chipped in running wheel barrels of dirt from one side to another. It was hard work.  Geneva watch videos and ate snacks on a cooler with the Pastor’s kid nearby.

The hard labor felt good, but man, there is NO shortage of needs for our missionary colleagues.

playing water games with kasetsu kids and SBBC staff

Finding our community

We’ve been searching for our permanent housing with the help of friends and the business manager at Asian Access, Kiguchi-san.  Now granted Sterling has no idea of what living in Japan is really like.  So we had asked Kiguchi-san to get us a place for the median income of Tokyo housing that is big enough for  a family of three, close to the church, near to transportation for our travel throughout Japn, plus work space, near to the train, but not too close, close to our new church in Kokubunji (but not too close), has a south-facing porch for line-drying our clothes, has parks for Geneva, and near to a potential hospital for giving birth. Also many apartments in Japan don’t rent to foreigners or to families (or dog owners). 

Poor Kiguchi-san. It’s a good thing he’s a Christian, as he is theologically bound to forgive and help us ;-)

He worked really hard to help us especially after our troubles with some of the Japanese bureaucracy ( I won’t publish that issue, but oooffffdah), but that’s a lot of needs.

Kiguchi-san took us to two places that he and our rental agent winnowed down for us.  It is the bloom of cherry blossom season now, and when Geneva and Sterling walked out of the station we saw this entire boulevard of cherry blossom trees.   I think it’s what they call curb appeal in real estate. But WOW! Its hard to beat a full bloom of tulips and cherry blossoms on a warm spring day, with a gentle breeze.

(Kunitachi Station Sakura Trees)

We were at Kunitachi Station in western Tokyo.  We met our agent, and saw a very modest three room apartment. While there is nothing spectacular about the apartment, it fits almost all the points above. Emi saw the places the next day, and we came to the consensus to live in Kunitachi, which is a station stop with a university, music scene, and a good number of families. 

(Geneva playing at the park with sakura trees in the background)

Yes, there is a park nearby, where Geneva made a couple playground introductions (I'd say friends but they were fairly shy compared to her).  Emi is of course wondering where we are going to put all our belongings in this Tokyo-sized place – but now that we have found a place, it is beginning to feel more like the foundation of relationships is being laid. We are a 12minute walk from our church, so we can invite friends over for lunch after church (gotta save some money and not go out  to eat).

In the Bible, Jesus often sends his disciples out with instructions of what to look for. The descriptions are usually a little odd by modern standards (i.e. look for a donkey next to a colt Matthew 21 ) – but the disciples always find the exact place or item that Jesus sent them to find. So why am I surprised that even amongst the chaotic description that we gave Kiguchi-san, He has set up our place??

**PS we still don't know the gender of little baby Omi***