Thursday, April 28, 2011

Vineyard Japan Relief Effort - Letter

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April 18th, 2010

Japan Relief Effort


A Letter From the Japan/Korea Partnership

Dear Vineyard family:

Today marks the one month anniversary of the earthquake/tsunami in Japan's Tohoku region. While the disaster receives diminishing US news coverage in the face of more recent local and international crises, the news coming from Japan suggests, if anything, a deepening awareness of the scope of the disaster.

A number of you have contacted Vineyard Mercy Response, Vineyard missions or us directly asking about Vineyard-based avenues of response to the situation in Japan. Over the past few weeks we have been exploring how we might support a Vineyard-based response; we've been in conversation with the Vineyard Missions, Mercy Response and National offices, and just returned from a one-week trip to meet with our Vineyard pastors in Japan, talk with directors of a local Christian relief agency, and visit the disaster area.

The Vineyards in Japan are taking initial steps to partner together with one another, and with other Christian churches and agencies, in early-stage response. Gail and I were able to get a glimpse of this on a 36-hour trip to the coastal town of Iwaki, where a local nondenominational church is serving as a hub for church-based relief efforts. We helped clean out tsunami-ravaged homes and serve refugees at local relocation centers, and found ourselves working together with Christians from around Japan as well as around the globe.

A bit of what we saw and heard: a young woman from Osaka cheerfully advocates for outreach even within the exclusion zone around the Fukushima reactors, joking that we've already died in Christ anyways; Pastor Kaz Ito tells of watching a young Korean man washing the feet of an obaasan (Japanese grandmother) at a refugee center, and how she begins to weep as she lets flow the grief of losing her husband – along with 2/3 of her village; we sort and clear what remains of the first floor of an older couple's home (photo, below), and see the wife break into tears as she thanks us at day's end; I glimpse one young westerner, knee-deep in debris, wearing a T-shirt that reads, "I ♥ Fukushima"; and, Gail overhears one neighbor ask another—next door to where we were working—"Who are these people?", and hears the other reply, "They are Christians."

The main thing that Gail and I kept hearing on our trip – most often from Japanese Christians – was, "What Japan needs right now, more than anything else, is hope." We are frequently reminded that this may be the most important window for the gospel in Japan since 1945, and we do believe that a movement committed to building communities of hope, to reaching the unreached, and to compassionate, Spirit-graced ministry has much to offer Japan at this time. So we want to offer our missions partnership as a means of assisting the wider Vineyard community to help support, and to serve alongside, our brothers and sisters in Japan. If you would like to explore working together in a Vineyard-based response, please contact us via the information provided below. Please note, also, that at least one Vineyard pastor from Japan will be at the national conference in Phoenix next month – stop by the Vineyard Missions display table to visit in person!

For such a time as this,


Karl & Gail Neils (on L of photo)
Pastors, Seattle Vineyard
Japan/Korea Missions P'Ship Leaders
www.seattlevineyard.org
karl@seattlevineyard.org

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