Seabees

The seabees finally showed up last night. I worked with a construction girl seabee. I am very impressed. High quality work and a good atitude. A very pleasant girl to work with. I hope I get a chance to work with some of the others.There are 7 or 8 of them volunteering their free time to help. They are stationed near Tokyo.

A Day Off to Explore

Cold, Wet Snow

                                                                   

 Tome Education Museum

New Friends

  A lot of volunteers have left here, plus it's Sunday, so it's much quieter here.  I  walked yesterday morning about 4 hours. That was nice.These photos are from my walk.

I had a good day. We finished the first house. Just clean up left. We have been taking break and lunch with a couple of Japanese construction workers. They keep showing up at break time with coffee and tea for us. I'm having a great time with these guys, even without our translator.  I will try to send pics of the home owners and their doctor son. Also our construction buddies.

A few photos from Japan

A Day Off

Hi all.

I am starting to settle into a routine. We are getting much work done, meeting many people. An amazingly diverse group of people, from different corners of the world. We all share a common goal. To extend Gods love and mercy to our brothers and sisters in Japan. It's Saturday 5:00 AM and I have the day off. Some folks have offered to take some of us newcomers on a tour, and maybe a museum. A tour of what, and what kind of museum? I have no idea. Every day is an adventure here. The doorways in the houses here are 5' 9" instead of our 6' 8"! A wee bit low for the Irish! And everyone else. There is much head banging involved in doing Gods work here. I miss you all. I will go now as many people are waiting to use the Internet.

                                                                                                                            Mark O'

Getting to Work

It was good to do a day's work.  I worked on replacing the floor on two houses.   They came & picked everyone up and took us to their storage area to unload a truckload of sheet rock.  Then we went back.   One other guy and I went to one house. We are just starting on it. I am supposed to  work on it until it's finished. They are expecting more people to help us.

   Things are always changing. An amazingly diverse array of people are volunteers---ethnic Japanese from Hawaii, people from the Mainland, Canada , and Australia . Chinese people with a British accent from Hong Kong & the UK are also here.  You can't assume anything about someone by looking at them. You don't know what languages, or how many languages will come out of their mouth or where they are from. We are expecting a group of sea bees from one of the bases in Japan. I think they are volunteering on their time off.  They will bunk with us.

It's 2 am Monday. We went to Ishinomaki yesterday for a 1 year ceremony. They sounded the tsunami warning siren at 2:45 to remember. Pretty emotional being there among all the devastation, where so many people died.
It's snowing. We start our first day of work today. Looking forward to getting to work.

This is home for a while:

This just in from Mark:
After 2 days of travel I arrived at Tome base camp on Friday afternoon. I lost Thursday crossing the date line over the Pacific. I plan to get that back on my my way home latter. We'll see? I can't find Tome on my map, but it's a bit north of Sendai. I think I will be working in Ishinomaki, about an hour drive south on the coast. Samaritan's Purse has a goal of completing repairs on 400 houses. With God's help, no doubt they will. I
I haven't had a chance to look around yet. There is a little snow on the ground and it's raining now.Thanks for all the prayers! It's working.

Mark made it to Japan

Mark made it safely to Japan. He says he had his orientation last night.

Shino (his Japanese daughter who lived with Mark & Barb for a year, ten years ago) and her friend drove to Tokyo and had dinner with him (and the other volunteers). Shino says she is also going to try to come visit him another time in Sendai.

Samaritan's Purse in Japan

Here's what Samaritan's Purse is doing in Japan. What a thrill for Mark to be a part of it!