Prayers for Iwaizumi

ともだちたち、ひさしぶり！

'Tis the night before VBS! However, we've spent our last week well, preparing for the VBS as well as spending 3 days in Iwaizumi. We teamed up with 3 other girls from Japan and America to help out a local missionary who has been working alone building churches in the Iwate prefecture for 15 years. Iwaizumi is an area near the coast that was damaged by the 2011 tsunami. It is absolutely beautiful there but unfortunately houses people who have lost their homes and families so they have to live in kasetsu (temporary homes).

While we were able to stay at a traditional Japanese home, called akerakan, we witnessed kasetsu communities that families could call a house, but not a home. On our first day in Iwaizumi, we set up a cafe and kids activities so people of all ages could gather to talk or play games or enjoy snacks. The kids loved all the activities we had for them and the old obaachans enjoyed having our artistic team member draw a caricature of them. What stood out to me the most was a girl, probably 8 or 9 years old, looking out for the kids and babies younger than her. She seemed to know if they were sad or needed help and was very willing to take time to make them happy. This really made me wonder if she had to look out for herself or younger sisters in her family as well and I realized that it was quite possible in kasetsu families that parents are too busy or were lost in the tsunami.

The next day, I was blessed with the opportunity to visit two kasetsus, the first having an entirely different atmosphere. Only one ojiisan (grandpa) showed up to the cafe. The kasetsu community was eerily quiet and no one was outside. The kasetsu from the previous day was full of life, where men were chatting and smoking outside, people passed by and greeted one another, and a man was out for a walk with his dog. However, at this kasetsu, it felt like hope was lacking. The ojiisan was very happy to talk to us and shared a bit of his life with us. He said that his home was very small and narrow and that the walls between each house was very thin. This caused people in kasetsus to keep to themselves, because they were afraid of bothering others by talking too much or having the TV on. The missionary shared with us that this group-centered culture of pleasing others may have been why the turnout to cafes was so low. She mentioned that because the room was small, people who may have wanted to attend were afraid they would cause discomfort so they would let others go instead. It saddened my heart that people like the ojiisan had to live so cautiously like this without knowing for how long. The ojiisan said he had been living there for 2 years and expected 2 more years in the kasetsu before the government was supposed to kick them out, but he didn't know what would happen then. People have already been slowly moving out of the kasetsu into permanent homes, but unfortunately that was changing the community feel in the kasetsus and making some families feel left behind.

In contrast, the kasetsu community room we visited in the afternoon was covered in walls of encouragement for Japan's recovery. It was much more joyful there and we had a lot of fun with 3 very cute kids! One boy named Fumia-kun was such a good kid, listening well and being kind, and he was so happy to be with us. At the end, our teammate was pondering which drink he wanted from the vending machine after depositing his money. Fumia-kun quickly yanked the cancel button, saying that our teammate should save his money and watch out because the machine would keep the money and cancel the transaction if it took to long before a drink was chosen. This kind of selflessness is so rarely seen with kids Fumia-kun's age and he was one of our favourites.

The last day was one of the best days for me. We went to a home where mostly old obaachan (grandmas) came out to the cafe. One obaachan asked to sing karaoke and was happy to see us try. She was too shy to  sing on her own at first, but after a while, she abandoned all pride and sang loudly into the microphone even though she couldn't get the words or the rhythm right! We also helped provide a craft for the obaachan's, giving them beads to make a bracelet. I helped out the singing obaachan and she was so funny! She didn't hold back and try hard to be extra polite, like most Japanese people. She pointed out a weirdly shaped bead on the bracelet I had finished for her and said it didn't look right. I asked a teammate to cut it off for me and he did. However, she then pushed the beads around and pointed at the bracelet. She said something like, "There's a hole here! It's alright, you don't have to make the bracelet again... but there's a hole here! ... I'm really sorry, really. Don't need another bracelet... But there's a hole! It looks weird!" I was laughing so hard that I didn't have the heart to tell her that she could just even out the beads so there was no hole. I just made her another one and she was really happy. It made me happy too because she said there was no need to be polite because we were friends. That was the first that someone called me a friend because most people hold back knowing my Japanese is terrible and that I'm mostly smiling and nodding. I loved this obaachan and really hoped that in the future, her openness and transparency would allow her to be open to Christianity one day.

Another woman at the kasetsu came by and showed us all these cultural items that were featured in the upcoming Bon festival in the Tohoku/Iwaizumi area. She taught us about the flutes and cymbals and dances and explained that were used to commemorate ancestors and family members who have died. Originally the dances and music were performed for the gods but they were now more used simply as celebration. However, a teammate commented later that he felt a lot of spiritual warfare when she had come. The missionary explained that the specific kasetsu area was very closed from Christianity and that the women who came to the cafes knew it was a Christian group. She felt as though the woman sharing her culture was not only because she had pride in the things in her community, but because she wanted to bring her Buddhist background into our Christian-run cafe.

Therefore, as this blogpost title is called, Iwaizumi needs your prayers! It takes almost 20 years on average to build a church in this rural area (15 years for urban Japanese cities) and the area is not very open to Christianity. The mission field will also be changing, because kasetsus will be emptying out and new communities will be built. All these changes may dampen the hope of Japanese people who don't want more change and who dislike constantly adapting to new atmospheres. The local missionary may have to change her cafe structure and may lose connections with people who must move away. So please please pray for this area!

Lastly, VBS tomorrow will need your prayers!
- Thank God for a decent turnout of 25-35 kids each day along with 10-15 parents who will stay with them
- Pray that the camp won't only be about fun games, but lessons about God and what God asks us to do
- Pray for the team to be in unity as we may be tired and worn out during the long day
- Pray that the language barrier won't be an obstacle for us non-Japanese speaking
- Pray that connections with the parents and families will be built so the church can grow through this camp

ほんとうに、ありがとう！

Love,
J