I am the English pastor at Victory Lutheran Church in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and I led a team of eight to work alongside Dean Bengtson in relief work in Ishinomaki in August.

It was an interesting experience working in Japan with a team from Taiwan. I was in Japan in April to help with the relief work and it was amazing to see how much had been cleaned up in three months but how much more still needed to be done.

Dean has been working in the Shintate neighborhood of Ishinomaki for several months. He’s been coordinating teams that have come from all over the world. He began working in one home (the Nakagawa home) in April and God opened up doors for working in the entire neighborhood. There is one Christian in a distant corner of the neighborhood. Pray for this neighborhood that the people there would come to know God as their Lord and Savior.

While in Shintate we helped remove dirt and grass from a building, break apart a concrete wall, power-wash and sterilize a house, and clean out a gutter. But we worked primarily in a vegetable field doing the final clean-up work which involved removing the last of the sludge (an oil/salt water mixture) and removing small pieces of debris. As we combed through the dirt I found a small tea cup filled with dirt, but intact without any damage. Then another team member found atea pot and soon someone else found the cover for the tea pot. Before we were just digging through the dirt callously throwing away cell phone parts, pieces of plastic, and other broken debris. But upon finding those items the team members realized that these items were once a prized possession of someone. We had no idea to whom they belonged and whether the owner was dead or alive. It was a sobering moment for us.