God is good. God knows best. God totally got rid of any doubt that I had in my mind yesterday...my first day in Kesennuma, Japan.

As with traditional Jet leg has it I woke up at about 1:15 AM and there was no chance of falling asleep again. I figured I would make some use out of this and got ready for a run... my lack of motivation for this superseded the desire to get back in shape though so it wasn't till about 5:00AM that I finally put shoes on and headed down stairs.

I have to hand in my Key when ever I leave the hotel so when the hotel clerk saw me he looked at me kind of oddly. It may have had something to do with me wearing shorts and having yaktracks on my shoes. That run started out well. I let myself get lost in Kesennuma for a while until I ended up down by the harbor. The harbor at 5:30 AM is an amazing sight. It wasn't quite sun rise yet and most of the fishing boats had already docked with their days catch. The fish market was still busy though. It was about this time that it started getting light out. That was the first chance I got to see all of the destruction the Tsunami did. It would blow any of us away. pictures of the destruction don't do this Tsunami justice. There were boats in areas where they should have been able to get to. There were buildings completely demolished. All that was left was the foundations. There were buildings that were standing but the first couple of floors were completely missing. It is really unbelievable.

At 10:00AM Pastor Nidaira picked me up from the hotel and we went to get my first glimpse of the center that I was going to be calling home for the next two months. While waiting to meet the Sato's we had a man come to the center. He had explained that he had received a flier from back in December and it said that the center would open the second time in February...so he figure he would come to check it out. He stayed for a while and talked about the day the earth quake and Tsunami hit. I wasn't really able to understand what was going on. My Japanese is still pretty rough and when the Japanese talk as fast as they do... any way I picked up on a few words. If t weren't for Mrs. Sato coming and helping me understand what was going on in the conversation I would have been completely lost.


I have my first class! Mrs. Sato and one of her friends are hoping to expand on their English and are hoping to take a test that would get them their certificate to become Examiners...from the sounds of if they were able to achieve this status they would be of a very elite group who has their certificate. So we decided to start tomorrow at 4:00PM!

Mrs. Sato's friend explained to me that having me come was a gift from God. She proceeded to tell me that her and Mrs. Sato sometimes talk about God. My response. "Oh cool I love talking about God"

Ms. Sato and her friend also talked about getting other people involved to have English class with me. both lady took some fliers to give to their friends. We also talked about getting some children's classes started and finding out if there were any Students that the ladies worked with that were interested in receiving additional ESL tutoring.

The crazy thing about all of this... I have never taught ESL and I have absolutely no materials to begin teaching ESL. The best part about that is that this means I get to be creative with my lessons. I decided I would approach these classes the same way I approach doing Jesus Cares Ministry and Worship at the Cross. That means I am going to make ESL more fun than anyone has ever seen. Stay tuned for more details on that!

Ms. Sato also talked about being part of Toast Masters in Kesennuma...I always figured this was something my friend Phil Scharrer did to sound cool but it turns out he wasn't kidding about what it is. I asked Ms. Sato if I could attend the meetings with her. She appeared delighted that I would want to. So that will start next Thursday!

After our last meeting pastor Nidaira and I went for a drive around the town. he tested me to see if I could figure out where we were on the map...I think I did pretty awesome. He took me to see the destruction. I realized that what I had seen this morning was just a tiny little bit of what had actually taken place back in March of 2011. My mouth stayed dropped for the half hour ride we took. I can't believe I am here. I can't believe that for some crazy reason God would want me of all people to be here. Pastor Nidaira and I talked about that a bit later over dinner. I explained that God knew the worries I had and knew my weaknesses and that today he had shown me that he wasn't worried about what I was worried about. In fact God decided to put the kibosh (spelling?) on all of the worries I had today. He provided two human resources to me to aide me. And then he showed me as simply as he could what exactly he wanted me to do and how I was going to do it.

God is good. God knows best. God totally got rid of any doubt that I had in my mind yesterday...my first day in Kesennuma, Japan.

A little assignment for those of you who are reading this. Come up with a passage from the Bible that I could have ended this post with. I have a couple in my mind but lets see what you come up with. Also only lets not get greedy and post like ten passages...lets give every one a shot at this :)