Tsunami recovery work is unique comparing to other natural disaster relief work like flood or earthquake because everything is washed away by powerful waves in a matter of minutes. When tsunami hit in South Asia in 2004, the cleanup and recovery work began rapidly in villages and coastal towns in Thailand but the spiritual and mental recovery was a slow and silent battle. Local fishing villages gradually picked themselves up again because fishermen knew what it meant to take risks as they had been living all their lives depending on water and boats, if they were able to overcome the fear of water again.
What Fukushima is experiencing now is totally different because of the radiation from the broken nuclear plants after the massive tsunami. Among those survived, many people (including farmers) have evacuated temporarily and they are now considering whether or not to leave their home towns for good. Those staying in their local communities suddenly found themselves too busy caring for victims and evacuees to face the unknown future ahead of them. Land recovery from contamination by radiation, evacuation and resettlement of people. That’s what caught my attention from when the early stage of radiation alert started coming out. I started praying with Jeremiah 29 for rebuilding local communities in and around Fukushima as I prepared for my trip out from Vancouver.
Our team left Shinjuku this morning for Koriyama city, about 250 Km away from Tokyo and approximately 60 KM west from the nuclear plants in Fukushima Dai-chi. While we were on the Tohoku highway, I mostly slept in the car but I started paying attention to the landscape for the last 1 hour drive of our journey. As we were headed north, there were still cherry blossoms on both sides of the high way, and the destructions from the earthquake became apparent. Four hours after we left Tokyo, we arrived at Grace Garden Chapel in Koriyama city, led by Pastor and Mrs. Sanga.
“Garden” in the middle of a church name caught my attention and I took a note on the Japanese handout I received and added “Jeremiah 29”next to it. As soon as we sat down, Pastor Sanga started talking and my Japanese colleagues were listening. Midori occasionally summarized in English for me. The Pastor and his wife organized some of their church members to serve in various locations already within the first few days after March 11 earthquake and tsunami. They now plan to reach out more systematically to the largest evacuation shelter in Fukushima, located in10 minutes driving distance from their church building. They hope to help people to re-establish their lives even at the shelter no matter how long it would continue without clear signs of being able to go back home. As I was listening to Midori’s interpretation, and reading some Kanji (Chinese character part of Japanese writing system), I started taking notes again “Jeremiah 29, build houses, plant gardens…”
Our focus of action plan immediately became the recovery of local economy and how to protect local farmers and other small businesses as Fukushima’s economy is said to be frozen already and it will only go down due to the radiation and prolonged solutions about the nuclear plants. As we were talking with the pastor and his wife, it became obvious to all of us that expanding relief action (distribution of handouts) would only keep the local economy inactive and keep the evacuees passive. We realized that we should find ways to turn that trajectory as quickly as possible and start building actions toward building a long term future. Of course, the conversation got animated and I lost track of Japanese and English interpretation. Mrs. Sanga spoke very good English, so she and I started chatting when there was a pause.
I told her about my reflection on Jeremiah 29 in connection with the church’s name, Grace Garden Chapel, and the action plan they made to reach out to the shelter. She suddenly got so excited and told us that Jeremiah 29 was the passage her father gave her when she married Pastor Sanga 20 years ago as they were moving to Koriyama to work in this church. A native of Hiroshima, Mrs. Sanga feels God has prepared all of her life for this moment to work in Fukushima.
Her eyes immediately filled with water as she shared her prayer about this disaster, “Recovery is not the big issue. We Japan must repent first. Repent of our greedy lifestyle, our sinfulness, stubbornness away from God.” She continued, “The continuing radiation is a reminder of our sin.” I turned around to whisper to Midori because that was exactly what we wrote for our friends to pray for Fukushima today.
I turned again toward the pastor’s wife and spoke to her, “Mrs. Sanga, this must be God’s work. What you said is exactly how our friends around the globe are praying today. You said it almost verbatim.” There was a holy silence for a few moments.
Before we left the church, Mrs. Sanga made a few phone calls and made arrangements for us to come back on Friday for a meeting with local business leaders to talk about creating local currency in Fukushima and other alternative actions to revive local economy. It felt as if Fukushima was already turning to a holy garden and as if Jesus was speaking to each of us, “Yes, I am coming soon” (Rev 22).
No comments:
Post a Comment