3

Winter is drawing close to the land of Tohoku as the wind chills our bones when we work outside.  For the people who live in the temporary housing, no one is sure how well those thin walls can shield them from the bitter cold.  A department store generously donated tens of thousands of hot water warmers to the ones who lives in temp house, and we have been busy packaging them with a couple other basic essentials and delivering them.

This day we delivered almost 800 hot water warmers, came to about 393 families.
After a whole day of labor, we have only reached a tip of the iceberg.  Sometimes it truly leaves me feeling so small, so insufficient.  I constantly have to remind myself that I am merely like the little boy in 5 bread + 2 fishes.        As long as I have given my everything, God will feed all who are hungry.  It is not me, but Him.

In one of the temp house compounds, the occupant number of all 48 households are either 1 or 2.  Likely that none of the families in this compound is whole.  Especially when it came to household that was only grandpa or grandma, it wrenched my heart and I could only bless them with a silent

Mr Sasaki and his highschooler son came to help with our packing and delivering when we arrived upon his compound.  We learned that he is a temple priest, in which his temple/house was washed away in the tsunami, and nobody can tell when it can be rebuilt.  His tone was gentle and light, only with a slight hint of sadness in his eyes.

I needed to go to washroom and Mr Sasaki had his son took me to their unit.  This was my first time to be inside a temp house.  Sasaki's younger daughter was also in the house and looked over to say hi.
I took a quick glance around the room, went to washroom and returned to the meeting place with Sasaki's son.  A question was burning at the tip of my tongue all the way as we were walking, but I couldn't manage to roll it out to ask him.

After I got on our van, I fetched out the occupant's list and searched for Mr Sasaki's unit number.  In the column of occupant number, the number "3" was printed beside their name.
When I walked in their house, the chaos was unimaginable for a japanese family.
It could be a single parent family,  It could be just their way to be.
But my initial impression was a chaos that stemmed from an utter loss.
Probably, probably mommy is not in the household anymore.

I often hope that I'd thought too much when these moments come.