We worked on a house on Wednesday that I've never been to, and we actually finished mudding it out! It is now ready for the carpenters here to take over and finish the house (after a few days to dry out and sit, since we power washed and bleached the whole house). It was really satisfying to actually finish something, even though we didn't start the house and work on it through to completion. 
Thursday we started on a new house - we basically demolished a whole room in a couple of hours (that includes cleanup time). We were knocking out walls and tearing out drywall and pulling out nails, etc. It was actually really nice to be doing work that you don't have to be super careful with the entire time.
Friday was a very fun day. This weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) is the Tohoku Celebration of Hope with Franklin Graham. The Celebration features a bunch of Christian artists including Kirk Franklin, Alfie, Dennis Agajanian, Mai Mizuki, and Tatsuyuki Yanagawa. Franklin Graham speaks each night, and last night (Friday) he did an altar call after his message. But back to the beginning of Friday. Since the Celebration is going on, most of the staff here at SP (Samaritan's Purse) are working on that and are in Sendai instead of here at the base. So, we are not mudding out for the next few days while the Celebration is on.
Friday morning, we all woke up kind of late and had a fairly lazy morning, which was really nice :) We left around noon, and drove for an hour and a half all the way to Sendai. We checked out the Arena from the outside and then went to the nearest mall (Aeon Mall). We all had lunch there (at around 2 pm) together and then spent some time just hanging out in the mall. That was some good quality time with others from the base that we haven't necessarily been working with every day. After we spent some money at the mall, we made our way back to the Arena where the Celebration is being held. By that time it was snowing pretty hard, and we knew it would be an interesting drive back to the Tome base later that night. 
We got into the arena at 5 pm when the doors opened, sat down, and just kind of looked around until some music started. They had some opening acts while people were coming in, and they were all pretty good, so we were excited for the "real" Celebration to begin at 6. Finally the lights turned off and the first musical guests came on stage. I won't talk about every act but this one deserves some recognition. The group was a Taiko group - Taiko means drum in Japanese and is a traditional style of Japanese drumming that is very popular to this day. The group was very good and it was a great opening act for the Celebration. In between acts they played videos of tsunami victims sharing their story and then talking about what Jesus has done in their life since. 
Unfortunately, the videos were only in Japanese, but for those of you who can understand... This is the first Hope Story they showed us... This man is from Akiranakagawa. This is the second one, and the woman is from Kesennuma. 
They also had lots of prayer throughout the entire Celebration. 
Different pastors from the area prayed in between acts and that was very cool. The entire Celebration was just full of Christ! Every artist talked about Jesus and even the MC talked about 神様 (Kamisama, or God) every time he got on stage to introduce the next artist or pastor. 
After Franklin Graham spoke and did the altar call, everyone who didn't go up front for the altar call started to leave. We were some of the last people to leave, just because we were talking to some different people after the concert. We finally left a little before 10, and arrived back in Tome at 11pm. We were all so hungry that we had a bit of food before we all went to bed, completely exhausted. 
Today we had another lazy morning, but two people that I've become friends with are leaving today to go back to America, so I've been spending some time with them before they actually leave. At noon we're going to leave for Sendai again to volunteer at the Celebration - we have to be there by 2:30 so we can usher guests arriving at the Arena and help them figure out where to go. I feel so blessed to be part of this Celebration, and none of it would have happened if Dad hadn't taken me to see Iwaki city last summer, which wouldn't have happened if God hadn't called my parents to ministry in Boston. God is so good!

後でお会いしましょう！

See you later!

~Chloe