The MRN Counseling Team which God graciously put together for me arrived in Japan on October 26th and returned to the States on November 4th.  The team was made up of Becky Holton, Director for Missionary Care for Continent of Great Cities, Jeff Holland, a Trainer and Missionary Care Specialist at Pioneer Bible Translations and twelve year veteran missionary in Togo, and David McAnulty, a missionary ‘kid’ who grew up in France and professor of Psychology at ACU. Sadly, Jake Morris, Chair of the Psychology Graduate Program at Lipscomb University, suffered an unfortunate back injury shortly before our departure and was unable to go with us.

The Counseling Team was invited to Japan by the National Japanese Aid Relief Team to debrief and work on group dynamics with the core members of the Japanese Relief Aid Team, made up of one American, Joel Osborne, and three Japanese, Emiko Namae, Hiroaki PC Akahoshi , and Gaku Osugi; to conduct a seminar on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, suicide prevention, grief, mourning & transition, and to inform Japanese church leaders how to help those caring for the children, adolescents, and the elderly in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. The Mito Church hosted the seminar, but some of those who attended came to the seminar from as far as four hours away from Mito. The Counseling Team also spent two evenings with those who had made counseling appointments.

The Japanese, I believe, because of their Buddhist and Shinto background, do not express emotions as openly as we do in individualistic cultures of the west. Collectivist cultures, like Japan, tend to express emotions less because the well being of the group is more important than individual well being. The Japanese tend to express their emotions privately. In the group dynamics process with the Japanese Relief Team’s core team members, we tried to put a process in place that would allow them to express their emotions in an acceptable way with each other. Jokingly the Relief Team asked if the Counseling Team could return to Japan once a month so that they would feel it was permissible to express their feelings. Understanding one another well is important as the Japanese Relief Team work has made a shift. Now that most of the victims of the tsunami have daily necessities and places to live, the team is spending more time dealing with their contacts in a more personal way. This shift means that the work will be even more taxing on the Relief Team. The Japanese team feels the awesome responsibility to minister to the spiritual and emotional needs of the people. Please pray for the team as they make this transition.

On Sunday, October 30th we worshipped with the church in Mito. After lunch, the Japan Relief Aid Team (the four core members), the MRN Counseling team and three women from the Tokyo Ichanomizu church travelled to Sendai. We used the church building in Sendai as our base camp each night. During the day we travelled north to Ishinomaki, one of the cities in the devastated area where we spent two days visiting with the Japanese people who have become the people of peace for their neighborhoods. The “people of  peace” have become the distributor of goods and those who monitor others in their community.

We saw only some of the destruction. The Japanese have been making order out of chaos for seven months now. After the tsunami, debris covered everything. In the debris, the workers found and buried thousands of people who were killed. Nearly 30,000 people are still missing. In Japan, a person must be missing for 15 years before they are pronounced dead.

The Japanese took the meters deep debris that covered all of the devastated area and placed it first into orderly piles. Now the Japanese are moving the orderly piles to landfill areas. There seem to be thousands of piles. After all the debris is removed there is still much construction work to be done to build permanent housing. The Japanese are putting up thousands of temporary housing units so that those victims in the tsunami areas will not have to spend the winter in gymnasiums and schools. Each housing unit, though very small has a two burner stove top, a microwave oven, a refrigerator and a washing machine. There are about ten small apartments per housing unit.

The Japanese are generous hosts. I’ve eaten at tables with chairs, but mostly at low tables with cushions. The low tables are covered in something like a comforter and glass covers the comforter. Food is placed on the glass. When you sit down you cover yourself with the comforter so you can keep warm and be comfortable. Every person usually has a soup bowl, a small plate and chop-sticks. Soups are made with a variety of fish and miso and mushrooms and greens. Some soups also have cubed tofu. The Japanese eat seasonally, so pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and cabbage fill the tables this fall. Steamed green sweet potatoes are served at almost every meal, including breakfast. Pumpkin is boiled in soy sauce and sugared water and ripe, ripe orange persimmons fill the trees and tables. I’ve eaten my share of raw tuna and other fish and eaten salmon and roe and fried sardines, cow tongue and vegetables tempura style and luscious fresh tofu and all sorts of mushrooms, and pounded rice and ice cream served over aduki beans. We ate things we couldn’t recognize, in respect for our Japanese hosts.

Everyone told us that the timing for our coming was perfect. We were all well received. Every Japanese person we talked with – often through a translator – asked us to please relay their thanks to the American people and the American Christians who had been so generous to send help. It was expressed to us several times by the Japanese that the earth quake and tsunami has caused the people in that area of Japan to feel more kindly toward others and especially to those who live outside of Japan who have shown them compassion. The Japanese realize how vulnerable they are. Since the 9.0 earthquake, thousands of smaller earthquakes have occurred. There were three earth quakes while we were there. People are hypervigilant. The suicide rate, already high, has increased exponentially. The gospel is needed. Pray for the harvest and pray for workers for the harvest. For more information about the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami