Relief Work: Sendai

We left early in the morning an extended cab diesel mini-van (diesel fuel is easier to come by.) Rev. Fukuda of Grace City Church Tokyo was our "guide". He needed bodies for loading & labor and an extra driver (me!) for the ~8 hr drive. We were happy to oblige. :)

I respect Rev. Fukuda (above) very much and really enjoyed getting to know him better over the course of our trip.  We headed through Tokyo, and then took the Tohoku expressway north all the way to the city of Sendai

Our first stop was to deliver our van-full of books, toys, and games collected as donations in Tokyo for children at Miyagi Children's Hospital.  This hospital was protected from the tsunami by the surrounding mountains, but has been hanging on with only basic supplies.  

The hospital staff was very grateful for the "non-essential",  yet still very important part of life in a Children's Hospital.  This hopefully will be the beginning of an ongoing support relationship with this hospital.

After spending several hours at the hospital (they gave us an in depth tour as a sign of their appreciation) we headed through Sendai city as we headed for Ishinomaki.   

Before arriving in Japan, we had the impression from American news that all of Sendai was wiped out ... well the main part of the city on the western side of the Tohoku Expressway looked pretty good.

The video below show rice fields on the east side (closer to the coastline) where you can see lots of debris and various cars strewn across the fields.  Our first real sense of major destruction that we would soon face ...