Trip Basics

As my spring break is about 3 months away, some details are starting to come together (not as many as I would want, though). Hopefully God continues to open doors for me and details will start falling into place. My spring break is March 1-11. Right now my plan is to fly out of Minneapolis on March 1 in the evening and, after a 4 hour layover in LAX, arrive at Tokyo Haneda at 5a.m. These hours suck, but it saves me about $400. It may not be too bad, though, because 5am is when the trains in Tokyo start up, so by the time I get through customs and everything the trains will be good to go. From the airport I will take a train (everything in Japan is by train) to Ueno station, where I will walk to my hotel. While I won't be able to check in, the people are very nice and will let me keep my luggage there until I can check in.

I will (hopefully) then meet up with Takuya and Sae. I met Takuya and Sae at MMBS on my last trip. They are graduate students at Tokyo University, and we had a lot of fun with them. Takuya is a Christian and Sae is very interested but has not taken that step of faith (You can read a little more about them in my first post). So Saturday, March 3 I hope to spend in Tokyo with Takuya and Sae, and that is when I will probably do sightseeing and all that good stuff. I will stay in the hotel that night and then go to Grace Tokyo Church in Shibuya the next morning. That is the church that we brought them to the Sunday after the earthquake and the people at the church are SO friendly.

After church, I will say goodbye to Takuya and Sae and hop on a Shinkansen. You know them better as a bullet train. The shinkansen will take me to Sendai, where I will meet the base leader, or if I am assigned to a different base, I will take the train to that base's station. I will be here from Sunday night (3/4) until Tuesday (3/12), when I will take the shinkansen back to Tokyo and fly home that night. I will get back into Minneapolis at about 6am on March 13 (gotta keep reminding myself it saves about $400...).

What am I doing in Japan, you ask? Well, I hope to do relief work in the Tohoku region; this is the region that was hit by the tsunami (Sendai is in this region). I am trying to get in to an organization called CRASH Japan. This organization is a Christian relief organization that provides the assistance to get Japanese churches into disaster areas. As an outsider, I only have a limited time with the people, and my relationship with them only has so much time to develop, so if I can use that short time to lay the ground work of the hope of Christ and then get them connected with the area church, that relationship can continue long after I'm gone.

I am also hoping that my time with Takuya and Sae will be productive as well. I do what I can over facebook, but hopefully that face to face interaction and bringing them to church again will get the ball rolling.

I hope to post a video eventually that will talk about the Japanese culture and what is all going on right now. I will make it sometime when I have some hours to dedicate to it.

Because of Him,
Kassidy