Dear Roberta

Thank you so much for your e-mail and being concerned about me and my family.

When the earthquake struck, I was getting ready to leave a restaurant where I had lunch with my friends. My husband was driving in Shiogama-city, my son was visiting here from Nagano and was at my mother's house. Also, my mother was at a day care center. It was an unbelievably huge and long quake. As a restaurant clerk told everyone not to go outside, I prayed to God to help stop the quake. I heard a lot of stuff crashing and collapsing. Then, we were told to evacuate to a parking lot. It was very dark even though it was mid-afternoon and we saw smoke coming out from somewhere with fire. The restaurant clerk was crying and apologized to us many times saying sorry there is nothing they can do. Then, we told the clerk, it is no one's fault and told each other to take care and we left the place.

 

We started driving. All the traffic lights were gone, huge traffic jams and people were panicking. The restaurant was near a port, and as we drove toward a train station, we already realized the river near by was getting receding. Then all of a sudden, muddy water carrying boats and a lot of trash came quickly flowing back up the river. However, all the cars were stuck in the traffic jam still. I took a different way home and it took about two and a half hours whereas it usually takes less than 30 minutes. 

 

Lucky, I made it home. My house was mess, and I spent the first 3 days with candles, and we finally got our electricity back on the 4th day. As soon as I turned on TV, I was shocked to see a lot of people had died and houses and cars were submerged in the entire area where I had had lunch.  

 

My mother has a habit of keeping a lot of food in stock even though it has expired. I used to tell her to not keep the food so long and throw it away when it gets old, but fortunately it saved US this time. We don't have water and gas in service yet, but hopefully at the end of this month, we will have them back. Right now, we don't need to think about what's convenient for us or anything.  All we need is to think about everyone's health, safety and save energy to heal the earth. 

 

Please keep Japan and those ones who are still living in very difficult conditions in your thoughts and prayers.

Etsuko

p.s.

I’m happy that we have the house, car, cloths ,electricity, telephone and family .But I don’t have water, gas, gasoline, and oil.  My husband’s uncle’s house is gone. Also, my 4 friends lost their house. I want to help refugees too. Now, I watch TV, sighing every day. I lined up to buy gasoline (only 20L) for 4 hours and also for food.  We need a little more patience. If a lifeline is restored, I want to help them. Thank you very much for checking up on me. Please pray for us.

To find additional information on the International Ministries website, including missionary journals, prayer requests, news updates and how to give to Japan relief, click here