Mixed Emotions

Dear Friends,

It has already been a powerfully mixed up emotional time here in Japan. For the 1^st time in 16 years, almost to the day, my whole family is back together again as missionaries, and we have brought our sheaves with us. All day Saturday and Sunday we spent laughing, sharing, and praying together with our Japanese brothers and sisters from the past and new ones that Bethany and John have led to Christ.

Then just as quickly, Monday our hearts broke because duty was sending our family in different directions. Bethany and John staying in Nara, Will, Autumn, Joseph and the grandkids flying to Hokkaido, and Gloria and I driving 700 kilometers to the devastated tsunami area of Ishinomaki. Let me try to describe this…

One day full of love, life, and family, the next full of debris, despair, and dissolution. On March 11^th, one wave washed away the lives of 28,000 of like precious people we had spent the day before with. Here, Gloria and I stood and stand where just a few months ago 400,000 people were pursuing life and possessions and things, and now it is all a huge pile of nauseating refuse, an eyesore, in the way, worse than worthless. Whole sections of neighborhoods are gone, factories, and warehouses… what remains is a testament to the emptiness of things and possessions, and even life against the power of just one wave.

Almost in defiance of the carnage, Gloria and I drove our vehicle through the wreckage onto a ferry and sailed toward the epicenter of the quake, where the lives of so many had been washed to sea. It is the only way to get to Hokkaido by car, where we are to continue our next leg of the journey.

But I do not want to take lightly this surreal moment as we sail past so many who have lost all. I want to feel their pain, and somehow some way be used by you dear Lord, to make a difference for eternity in the lives of these that are lost…yet living.

In Jesus name…