Cause for Joy

Greetings everyone. Dan here tonight.

I had an exceptionally interesting (joyous) conversation with a woman I had never met before today. She had come into our office on the day of the Café a few weeks ago. I was in Tokyo for those two days. Fujino-san (a woman in her mid-sixties) poked her head in our door around 11:00 this morning mostly to see what we were up to and say 'thanks again.' She complemented us on our work of getting all these quilts out to people who really needed them and said that she had hers covering her kotatsu (table with a heater on the bottom of it). She and I chatted about her 'first experience with Christmas' during the Café when another return guest of ours came through the doors. The two women exchanged greetings and swapped stories about the blankets they had received. While I was talking with this second guest, Fujino-san said (somewhat discreetly) to Andi that she had gone to church a few days ago (Andi looked to me for a quick translation, and I had a hard time holding back a smile).

Let me say that again: Fujino-san's first experience with Christians and Christmas was a couple weeks ago at our office. It turns out that she went to church at the Catholic church here in Kesennuma on Christmas Day. She didn't understand much of what was being done or said, or even the name of the book they were reading from, but she was curious about what made us Christians tick.

I could see in her eyes that she was full of questions, but didn't have the time to sit with us and talk for long. Also, we ran out of the 'intro to Christianity' booklets that we had been giving out. So, I gave her the phone number of one of the Japanese pastors that has been working with us and told her to give him a call and then fairly quickly, she had to get going.

After she left, I told Andi about our conversation. It's not often you see pure joy raise up the way it did in Andi's eyes when I told her about Fujino-san's story.

If you have be following our adventure on this blog, you know that our days are full of challenges ranging from language and cultural barriers, to taking care of our two boys. Today, there was cause for joy.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Kesennuma. There are mixed emotions in our camp. On one hand, we are starting to see 'progress' and really getting to know people here.  On the other hand, we are looking forward to sitting on our couch and cooking in our own kitchen again. I have been grateful for the chance to get a serious brush-up on my language skills, but can't wait to be in a conversation that I don't have to work so hard to understand. I know Kai is going to race into his room in our house in Cheyenne and play and play and play with the toys he hasn't seen for a month. I will go back to work, and life with return to the way it was, mostly. We will be different than before we came here. Kai has learned countless lessons about language, patience, disasters, culture, and love. As Andi highlight in yesterday's post, Kai has matured a great deal in our time here. He's not even four years old yet, but he has experienced parts of life many people never get to. Andi and I have been blessed to hear first-hand accounts of the horrors of 3.11 and the aftermath, AND we have had the pleasure of being able to help.

God saw fit to bless me with an ear for language, and He put it to good use this last month. Before we came here, we knew a lot about the disaster and the status of the recovery. What we didn't understand entirely was the amount of sorrow mixed with joy we would see come through our small office. That is the true work that we have been tasked with. Yes, warm quilts are a tangible way to help, but the conversations over a cup of hot tea is where the memories that will be carried forward are created. My prayer is that Fujino-san and others will continue to poke their curious heads into the office as we pass the work onto our successors.