1st. April, 2011 ‘Secondary Volunteering team leaving, & relief mission at Natori area’

This early morning around 4:30 a.m. the secondary volunteering team left for Kansai and Hiroshima region. It will take such a long journey back home, about 12 hours to Kansai and 20hours to Hiroshima. We were to bow our head in gratitude for those pastors, brothers and sisters at the churches who came all the way from such a distance.
We, the remaining members of our Sendai church and a person from the cyubu team decided to deliver the supplies to the Southern area from Sendai where we had never been. Among the area, there is Natori city where the NHK televised live through aerial image of tsunami at …coast and Arakawa area. Because it takes only half an hour by car to get there, the image was shocking and could not help crying. We were heading for the New Life Natori Church (Pastor Takashi Onuma) of Conservative Baptist group. Before visiting there, we had look around the …area, again we saw the aftermath of tsunami, which was over 5-6m high. We were astonished by the fact that a material, which we thought it was a cloth rolling around the tower, was actually made of steel. Not only so, we were shuddered at the scenery where the breakwater made of concrete has completely brown off with its iron framework, and nothing was remaining. An another thing which was very interested was that the all the utility poles and trees have fallen down towards the same direction, since it was how tsunami hit. Yet, only a few km driving into the inland from the coast line, there were the McDonald opening normally and the multitudes of cars running on the national highway. In such a environment, a bowling centre was used as ‘an place to keep body’. Such a huge gap in such a close distance made us feel dizzy.
Due to such a situation, we were very wondering of the safety of the church, however, thankfully the sanctuary has remained without any damage since it is located about a few km away from the highest point where tsunami reached. The Pastor O who used to be a supervisor of KGK, welcomed us warmly, and we, the student subjective team, had a great fellowship with him. They had had enough supplies, and indeed the supermarkets nearby were opening as usual. According to the Pastor, in the first week after the tsunami was quite difficult, like he had to wait in a queue for about 12 hours to get petrol for his car, yet at present almost everything has recovered. This Natori area got a fast recovery of the gas supply, and there is only very few places where it still has not recovered.
Since we brought the supplies, we drove around three places of shelter and church. Yet as we expected, the shelters have got enough supplies, and there was no one around in the church. As a result, it was the first time we did put the supplies down nowhere and returned. However, it was a fruitful day that we could have a good fellowship with the Pastor O and that we could find out that the Natori area mostly has got enough supplies. By the way, the supply for gas at this church has not been recovered yet.