Saturday in Ichinomaki

Sorry for the late post. There is a lack of wifi access where we are staying and we have been busy since we got back from the Tohoku area. Here is a post I wrote early Saturday morning.
I love this team we have here in Iwaki. Jason, Jordan, Haj and Yu chan are awake, packed and ready to go! It's another beautiful morning in Japan, a bit early around 2:30 am. We are driving north to Ishinomaki where we will meet up with another group of volunteers. This ministry time we have spent here in Iwaki has been awesome. Yesterday we prepared lunch and dinner which turned out to be two great meals. Jason, Jordan, Yu chan and I spent the morning cleaning the center with Hannah.


Hannah is a team member from a group of seven young ladies from Colorado who brought dance ministry to Japan. Hannah sang hymns while she worked and has a beautiful voice. She shopped for food with us and helped prep stuff in the kitchen. Jason and Jordan swept the floors, cleaned the carpets and bathrooms. Yu chan did the same in the women's area with Hannah and one other lady from Norway. Although this does not sound like very exciting or challenging or relief like efforts in an area decimated by the tsunami, this work is very important. Feeding and housing volunteers is critical to the mission of sending workers to the field. If they are not fed properly and given good nutritious food and if they have dirty rooms or unclean showers, they will have a harder time focusing on the mission of serving. Our team understands that concept and stepped right in to the job. Because we worked as a team, we were very efficient and this led to being able to send Jason, Jordan and Haj to the field in Iwake. I'll let them share there experience with you on a later blog.
For me, cooking was what I was called to do and it was awesome. Pasta three ways, lemon-butter-cream, anchovy-olive oil and a Japanese spaghetti sauce made with bacon, hot dogs, ketchup, tonkatsu sauce and Japanese mayonnaise. The volunteers loved it! The next day for lunch we had poke, a Hawaiian style dish made of ice cold raw tuna mixed with seaweed, salt, onions and a slightly sweetened soy sauce served over hot steamed rice. It was a new dish for most of the volunteers however, they ate it all and kept saying "oishi"
For the last dinner, we made Thai green curry over rice. Very simple but full of blessings. Three high school girls who had recently been visiting the GMC came durning the late afternoon. They hang out because they don't want to go home, it's boring or parents are not home. So today Jason and Jordan were able to talk and invite them to help prepare the evening meal with us. At first they were shy and did not want to do much. I started talking with them and asked who was the best cook and they all raised there hands. I asked if they wanted to cut the vegetables and chicken meat and the three agreed to do it. Before long everyone was laughing and joking about who was best! It was so cool to watch as they girls opened up and relaxed. The best part was during the chicken meat cutting we removed the skin from the thigh meat and I asked one of the girls if she would like to cook the skin and she said we can pan fry the skin with shio and serve it as an appetizer. It was a big hit and the girls


were so proud of their help in the kitchen preparing the meal. We acknowledged them during the blessing of the food and they were so touched. One girl had tears in her eyes and the other two were smiling.
Later we served 60 people the Thai curry and many of the volunteers were so thankful for a delicious meal. God was with us our entire time in Iwaki and led the way in all we did.
Mike for the Team


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