Saturday, April 09, 2011

The Chapel Did It!

Misawa Helps is the name of the local volunteer clean up drives. "Have You Done It?" is the catch phrase, we have a big tally board on the main drag of the base (beats the DUI board that was there LOL), and there is even an AFN commercial

You must be 16 or go with an adult. Jared's trips have been with this program. I've not been able to "do it," as Arielle hasn't been comfortable watching the children for an entire day alone.

Today the chapel reserved seats on the buses. We actually had a chapel clean up day planned for Sunday, but the trip was cancelled and we moved to join with the trip for today. Jared needed a break. I went.  It's exhausting, back breaking, COLD, rewarding.....Today's mission was to our local beach.  The beaches are still littered with tangled masses of debris.  Our job was to take pieces of boats, nets, anchors, ropes, tarps, sails, tin etc out of trees, drag them to the road where the equipment can get in...and make piles of salvageable, burnable etc.


Three on the left are PWOC Ladies....Shining at Operation Tomadachi

Erika was one of my Tokyo traveling partners. We admitted we enjoyed ourselves today much more than our days of shopping and waiting in Tokyo. 

Michael in the middle....


Ruth and I


We were ready for a break. Akikosan came on this trip. It was fun to work with her all day....

I cannot tell you the number of piles of nets like this that had to be untangled and moved. 

Tired at the end of the day, but we had to go see the ocean (we'd been working on the other side of the seawall all day). 

The Whole Group

Somewhere during the day I decided to go to the onsen when I got home.  I was too cold and tired to go....but I soaked in a hot tub, got the sand and grit out of my eyes, ears and mouth and feel human again. LOL 

We'll do it again....maybe not as a chapel...but as a family.

Choosing Joy!
©2010 D.R.G.
~Coram Deo~
Living all of life before the face of God...