Friday, July 22, 2011

The Most Recent Trip... in Pictures

Our wonderful team, working hard. 
The Samartitan's Purse camp sleeping quarters...many interesting experiences there.
The dobo muck and oil spilled throughout the farm, with deposits of rotten potatoes, made for some very interesting smells and dirty butts.
Combing the field to remove debris that might catch and break Abe san's plowing machinery. Never have I been so proud of a square of straight clear dirt.
A quick trip to Minamisanriku, which is right near Tome. This town is so destroyed, that there are no plans to rebuild it. But places like Ishinomaki already have people wanting to rebuild their lives there, and a lot of clearing and rebuilding is needed there in order to make that possible.
Kimiko Isaya and her husband Isaya san, standing on part of their farm we helped clear. What a joyful, persistent couple. I'm so glad I got the chance to meet them.
Abe san's farm--a section he has cleared to test if he can still grow crops even with salt still mixed into the soil. There are beans and squash growing in his experiment plot, which is a sign of hope in front of the rest of his huge uncleared farm.
We helped to muck out houses in Shintate, Ishinomaki so that they could be restored and fixed to be livable again. These houses go through many steps with Sam. Purse before they are livable, but it is part of their 300 houses by Christmas plan.
It was so encouraging to see almost 50 volunteers pour onto the field the morning we left Tohoku to return to Tokyo. We showed them what we had been doing, gave them advice about the work, and said goodbye to all our newly acquired friends. It was hard to leave, but we knew we were leaving everything in many good hands.
Yeah... this sums up our team members.

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