Ishinomaki {part 1}

Last week I spent 6 days in Ishinomaki {a town in Tohoku, the area that was hit hardest by the tsunami last year} with a group of 14 people from our chapel.  This trip was very different from my experiences in Ofunato last year {o fu na to} but still incredibly important and life changing.  This trip we were working with a group of wonderful missionaries {B-1}, so a lot of the work we did was outreach and not so much hard, physical, labor.  I'm going to break my week up into two posts, one about the outreach work we did and one about the dirty work.

Our 1st day, we hosted an American style BBQ for some residents of the neighborhood.  We served ribs, chicken, corn, salad, beans and watermelon to about 70-100 people.

Day 2 we organized a carnival for the local kids club.  At the end of the day, one of the ladies in charge said she hadn't seen the children that happy since before the tsunami.  To us, it was the ultimate compliment.

We had lots of water games!

face/hand painting

a climbing wall {that was at the building we were using, so we took advantage of it!}

shave ice

tug-of-war

the Japanese mom's whooped the Americans at tug-of-war 

hoola hoops

and a few other events set up.

At the end of the day, the children presented us with decorated koma, or spin tops, as a thank you.

We traded the koma for candy =}

photo from the B-1 website

the girl in the blue here is the one who decorated my koma...you can't see it in the photo but I think it looks just like me ;-}

The missionaries provide free English lessons to kids in the neighborhood once a week and our last day in Ishinomaki, we had an opportunity to join in the English lesson.  We decided to incorporate some games into the lesson so we could have a little more fun with the kids before we left.

Part 2