Noto

Dear Family and Friends,

Here’s another update for you.

Disaster Relief

You may remember that in January of this year a major earthquake struck the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture here in Japan. The 7.6 magnitude quake hit on New Years Day, right as families were celebrating their most important holiday of the year. The city of Nanao experienced the most damage, where over 400 people died, and hundreds of homes were destroyed.

When the earthquake hit, some of you contacted us and asked if we were OK. Since the Noto peninsula is 200 miles away, we never felt it. Also, many of you asked if were going to be involved in disaster relief and cleanup, and back then our answer was, “We don’t know yet.”

But as of this week, we are now able to enthusiastically say that yes, we were able to take part in helping provide relief and cleanup from this terrible disaster.

Yes, the cleanup effort is still going on and there is still a lot of work to be done. In many ways, now is the grimmest time for the victims in Noto and Nanao. The international news coverage has stopped, and the Japan National Guard has packed up and gone home. The few insurance claims that can be made have paid out. Now the residents are left to themselves to try to pick up the pieces and figure out how to move on with their lives. Hundreds of families are still living in temporary shelters. The worst part is that all the resort hotels in Nanao were damaged or destroyed and were forced to close. Since tourism is the center of the city’s economy, family incomes have come to a standstill.

But the church is still running relief excursions to the Noto peninsula. We were invited to go this past weekend. Our wonderful branch president, President Murakami, drove a team of us from Shibuya and made the 7-hour drive across the island of Honshu to the disaster area. Since it is out of our mission boundaries we had to get permission from President Tueller, who graciously and excitedly said Yes.

We left Shibuya on Friday at 2pm, made the long drive through the Japan Alps, grabbed some dinner, then stopped at a public “spa” for the night. The spa was basically a hot spring bath house, without hotel rooms. We tried to get some sleep on lazy boy chairs after taking a bath, then got up early had headed to Nanao.

The church is working with an independent NPO to coordinate relief efforts there. About 60 “Yellow Vests” showed up at the staging area to help on Saturday. (That’s what the NPO staff calls church members with the yellow Helping Hands vests.)

We were divided into groups and our group assignment was to clean out an evacuated and abandoned house. The house was occupied by a widow in her 80s and was so damaged that it now needs to be torn down. But before that can be done, all the contents have to come out, be sorted, and disposed.

Fortunately, the widow survived the earthquake, and is now in a care center. But she left behind an entire lifetime of clothing, dishes, furniture, and belongings. Nobody had been inside the house since the day of the quake back in January.

When we walked in, it looked like King Kong had picked up the house off the ground and shaken it, then dropped it back down. Every room was a stew of decades of ‘stuff.’ The house tilted to one side and the floor was uneven and had waves in it. Honestly, we’re not sure it was safe to be inside. But we spent the entire day hauling and sorting the contents.

The widow’s daughter in law was there and she was so relieved and grateful for our help. We can only imagine the months of sleepless nights nights she and her family have spent trying to figure out what to do with this house. The supervisor from the volunteer staging area said there are still hundreds of remaining houses that need this kind of cleanup. We’re sure many, many families continue to suffer and struggle.

At the end of a long day of house cleaning we drove until we found another public bath house, got ourselves cleaned up, then made the long drive back to Tokyo. We got home at 1am, crashed into bed, and immediately zonked out after going almost three days without a night’s sleep.

It’s safe to say that there was nothing relaxing about this trip. But it was a real adventure. Sister Low says that it was fun. We loved it. We remind ourselves that our job is to serve the people of Japan in any way possible. This was another way. Our responsibility is to represent the Savior – to be where He would be and do what He would do if He were here. We are so grateful to have had this opportunity. We will probably have more opportunities to do this in the future.

Sisters Conference

Last week was our mission Sisters Conference. Sister Low worked with Sister Tueller to help plan the event. That meant making small gifts for each sister, buying table decorations, and planning activities. Sister Tueller decided to do a soup and salad bar for lunch and asked all the senior couples in the mission to cook a pot of soup and come help set up the room. We cooked two pots of soup. We cooked a pot of miso tonjiru soup with four varieties of miso. And Elder Low made a pot of chicken noodle soup with his famous homemade udon pasta noodles. Both were wildly successful.

We have over 50 sister missionaries in the Tokyo South Mission and they all came for a day of learning, testimony, and fun, followed by lunch. We loved being with them. It was fun to chat with sisters who had been in our district in the past and we haven’t seen for a while. All our sisters are amazing. They come from all over the world. They are far from home. They are learning the most difficult language in the world. They are smart. They are powerful. They know how to teach the gospel. They do hard things every day. We love them all.

Halloween Party

We had our annual Halloween party last night as a Family Home Evening.

If you remember, our branch didn’t have Halloween parties in the past before we came here. Young single adults are busy during Halloween and the branch felt nobody would be available to come. But Sister Low changed that last year and essentially forced a party into being and made it happen. That party last year turned out to be a wild success. Here we are a year later, and we now have new members who were introduced to the church because of that party.

This year we followed the same tradition as last year. Our wonderful missionaries once again pounded the streets of Shibuya and invited anybody who would listen to come. They printed hundreds of flyers and stuffed them into the mailboxes of the apartment buildings in the neighborhood. They asked all the members planning to attend to bring a friend.

For the event, Elder Low cooked a five-gallon pot of chili, along with chips, salsa, and nachos. Sister Low made about 100 breadsticks that looked like chopped off fingers. The missionaries put the menu on the flyer they handed out. Hot chili, breadsticks, nachos. Please come.

We had about 50 people come. All the members came through and brought their friends. The breadstick fingers were devoured in five minutes, and there was a fight over the last bean in the chili pot.

We played Just Dance on the big screen and also did the traditional Shibuya Halloween piñata. Once again, Sister Low designed a piñata that was unbreakable. You could store your life savings in that thing, and nobody would be able to get to it.

The night was so fun and we were so thrilled to be with everyone. Nonmembers, members, missionaries and a few people we’ve never met before all came together. It was crowded and noisy and messy and fun. We ate a lot of food. Then we cleaned up together. Then we went home and crashed into bed. Again. This is what a joyful life is like.

Sister Low woke up this morning, sat up in bed and said, “Halloween Party. Check. Now on to the next.”

Yes, there is more coming. Lots of good stuff. So stay tuned.

Please remember us in your prayers. And if you have a spare slot, please remember our missionaries and the people they are teaching as well. Dearest grandkids – we love you and miss you so much. Please remember to pray for us. We know Heavenly Father hears your prayers.

We love you all.

Elder & Sister Low