Moving on, but God's got this

I wrote this post on Thursday: I'm in the car right now on my way back to Tokyo. While this is a very bittersweet car ride for me, I'm excited to go back to the city and spend some time there.
     Yesterday was a pretty emotional day for me and others. Until then, I was unsure whether I was leaving or not. The night before, things were finally figured out and I knew that I would be leaving today. I went to my worksite as normal with the carpenters, had devotions with our homeowner, and got to work. At break time (10am) all the guys 'ushered' me into our drywall room, where we'd been eating lunch for the past few days, and showed me a cake that they had gotten for me at a bakery. They had my name written on it in frosting and they said that they wanted to tell me how much they liked having me on their team and that they're going to miss me a lot when I leave. I was completely speechless when they said all of that. I had had so much fun working with them, and I knew I was going to miss them a lot. They all said they would be praying for me, wherever God places me next.
     At the end of the day, I told the homeowner that it was my last day and that I had an amazing experience working in her house for her and her family. At that point we both teared up a bit and then I said that I would be praying for her and her family all the time, and then we were both crying. Then I told her that I have been so blessed by working in her house and being able to see her all the time, and by then most of the team was crying. I'm not sure why it was such an emotional moment for everyone, but I do know that I will never ever forget Abe-san (or Okaasan as I call her, which means Mom in Japanese) or her family, and I will forever cherish the memories I have of working in her house. I hope that God has used me to make a difference in her life, whether through a devotion I did or just by being there... I pray that she will know our God and that she and her family will come into contact with Him in an incredible way.
      I've made many good friends during the past three weeks that I've been at SP, and I have met so many incredible, God-fearing people. I'm completely overwhelmed with how many amazing people God decided to put into my life during my time at SP, but I am also so grateful for all of them. I've met people with insane testimonies of how they turned to God, people like me who feel like they belong to two or more cultures, and people who simply want to help. I've met engaged and married carpenters who have been here for months and are praying about going to another country to volunteer after the SP bases in Japan close on April 30th. Everyone there is amazing, and many of them are sacrificing significant time and money to be there and to volunteer.
     Wayne is an amazing Christian man who, once I started working with him, looked out for me all the time. He very obviously cares about your faith, and a few days after I started working with him, he told me he considered me his adopted daughter :) It was wonderful to work with his team for my last week and a half at the SP base.
     Mike is another great Christian man who was also on Wayne's team. He teased me constantly but was also concerned about me and how I was doing emotionally and physically. I learned a lot from Mike, and hope to keep in contact with him, even as he goes back home to California.
     Daniel was a guy who worked on our mud-out team for a while, and then started working with carpenters as a translator. It was really cool to get to know him and to work with him. He is definitely a God-fearing man, and I learned a lot from him even though we didn't work together for very long.
     Julian came on the same night Nate and I did. He's staying with a host family instead of at the SP base, so every morning we drove him to our work site and got to know him fairly well during our drives. He's 18 and taking a gap year between high school and college. This past winter, he taught at a school in Chiba (just north of Tokyo), and then decided to come back to do relief work until the middle of April.
     Moe is a girl who came about a week and a half, maybe two weeks before I left. She's a missionary kid (kind of) who grew up in a bunch of different places, including England, Ethiopia, and the US. We clicked right away when she arrived, and even though we never worked together, we spent a lot of time together before and after work. She lives in Japan, so I hope to be able to spend more time with her before I leave Japan. She is an amazing woman of God, and I've already learned a lot from her.
     Ron is a super fun guy. He teased me constantly, just like Mike, and he definitely cared a lot about me. he was always looking out for me and making sure I was okay after every day of work. It was apparent to me that he had a real heart for helping people in need. He was always around to brighten up my day if I was having a rough morning or had had a bad day working.
     Marshall was another amazing man who was at the SP base. He's from Georgia, and he was at the base for two and a half weeks. Marshall was kind enough to let me hang out with him after we all came back from work. We had lots of fun talking about various things, including the houses we were working on.
     Carrie is also from Georgia. She and Marshall are from the same church and have known each other for several years, but she came about three weeks before Marshall did. Carrie was one of the only women volunteers there when I arrived, so she became a friend very quickly. She was such a comfort to me - I could talk to her about things I was thinking about, especially connected to the work we were doing. She kind of took me under her wing, since I didn't know anyone and am younger than a lot of the people there. 
     Marshall and Carrie left on the same day about two weeks ago, and the night they arrived in Tokyo (they had ridden the bullet train from Tome to Tokyo), Marshall proposed! Carrie accepted, and they went back home to Georgia. I am so excited for them both!!
     There are so many other people I could talk about, but it's late, so I'm going to finish fairly quickly. Overall, I met a ton of amazing people up there, even if they were only there for a few days. I will never forget everyone I met - the Americans, Japanese, Koreans, Australians, and MKs from all over the world.
     So on thursday we drove back to Tokyo from Tome, and I stayed with a fellow missionary who lives in Tokyo. Then yesterday night (Monday), my Uncle came to pick me up from her house, and I'm staying at his house until Wednesday afternoon/night, when I will take a train to Chiba to stay with Mary Lou and Tom. I will be staying with them until our missions Field Council (meeting of all Converge missionaries in Japan), which will be taking place at the foot of Mt. Fuji (called Fujisan here in Japan) from March 28-30. After that, I will be heading back up north, although I'm not sure how long I will be staying this time.
     I realize this is a long post, so thank you for reading through all of it. I am so incredibly thankful for all of your prayers for me. This resting time in Tokyo has been emotionally challenging as I process my experiences in Tohoku, but it has also been an amazing time of God's reassurance that everything will be okay. He knows exactly what we need when we need it - that includes Skype dates with friends and family, an email, or even just a post on my Facebook wall! He knows what scripture we need for every day, as I've been seeing over and over again. 
     I need to go, as it is getting late and I'm tired, but I hope to be in touch again soon, with probably a much shorter post.

後でお会いしましょう！

See you later!

~Chloe

Today was my day off. I want to talk about yesterday, though. 
     It was the one year anniversary of the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami. I helped cook for a memorial service that we held for our homeowners. We spent the entire day cooking enough food for probably 300 people, and after the service was done we served it as well. While it was fun to be cooking with so many wonderful Christian women, it was also a day of mixed feelings. At 2:46 pm, a siren wailed from the loudspeakers spread over the entire town. Even though we were in the middle of cooking, we had a moment of silence while the siren was sounding, and as the last eerie tones faded away, my eyes teared up a little bit remembering that day and how many precious lives were lost, and how many people who survived have permanent emotional scars and have so much pain right now.
     While I am not trying to be mean to anyone, it saddened me to go on Facebook that night. Only a few people said anything about the anniversary, and most of them had some deep connection to Japan. I realize that in America, and in other countries, there probably wasn't too much media coverage, and maybe some people just didn't care, but it was hard to see that almost nobody said anything when it was such a huge deal to me. I suppose I'm just being selfish and narrow-minded, but that's how I felt. 
The lyrics to Hillsong's Hosanna include the words, 
        "Break my heart for what breaks yours
          Everything I am for your kingdoms cause"

I want my heart to break for the things that break God's heart. And He's already working on that. After yesterday, I'm finding it hard to see the houses we work in as just a job anymore. I used to be able to, but now, it's so much more than a job. It's someone's home. Someone's life. Someone who lost precious things. It isn't just a story anymore. This is real, and I'm living in it every single day. And it's hard. But I know that with God I can do it. Not on my own strength, but being fully reliant on God's strength to carry me every day. And I'm okay with that.

     Just wanted to share my thoughts about yesterday with you. It's a new thing for me...

後でお会いしましょう！

See you later!

~Chloe

Hello everyone!
What a week (and a half)!
Short list of what happened:
•Two days of Tohoku Celebration of Hope
•New guy - from Northwestern (my school's rival!)
•Lots of friends leaving :(
•Different work all week
•Leading devotions
•Japanese toilets!
•Learning how to use power tools!!!!!


Okay, so I will address all of these things in order. I'm afraid that this is going to be a very long blog post. Again. Except maybe longer than normal.


First, two days of Tohoku Celebration of Hope. Last time, I blogged about Friday night, which was the inaugural night of the Celebration. There isn't that much to report about the two nights following, except that they were fairly similar, save a difference in songs and order of artists, and the passage changed a bit but the message was still a salvation message. After the last day, SP Tome helped strike (for those who don't know theatre terms, this means dismantle everything) and we stayed until about 10 pm. We all came home Sunday night very tired, and many of us took Monday off, so it wasn't quite as boring as normal. We also took a trip to downtown Tome-Towa (the city the SP base is in) and went to a secondhand store (Second Street), a hardware/home store (Homac), and the mall (Aeon Mall). In the mall we shopped around for a bit just exploring and then we all met at Mister Donut and got donuts there.


Second, new guy! On Monday before we went downtown, I came out of the sleeping area, went to get breakfast, and noticed a new guy sitting by himself reading a Japanese-English bilingual Bible - this version I've seen many times as my mom has one and our church has a few as well. I decided to sit on my own just in case he was in the middle of a bible study or something. All of a sudden he sat down across from me and asked me if I went to Bethel (my university). I said yes and he told me that he goes to Northwestern, which is my school's #1 rival. We laughed about that for awhile and ended up talking for almost an hour about a lot of different things. I showed him around the base and then we all went downtown. He's been working with our team all week, and is leaving tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon, and I will be sad to see him go. I already think of him as one of our team, and he definitely added a lot to it.


Third, lots of friends leaving :(. There was a team from Kansai, Japan who was here for a week, but one of their team members stayed behind. She's staying up north until the bases close on April 30th because she wants to help. However, because she doesn't have her own transportation to work sites, and ours are usually an hour or more away from the base, she has been moved to another base where the work sites are walking distance from the base. I was sad to see her go, even though we didn't communicate much (neither of us spoke each other's language very well). She was such an encouragement to me because she's sacrificing her time to volunteer, even though she could be working, making money, and living much more comfortably back in Kansai instead. Also, the guy from Northwestern is leaving tomorrow which is sad :/, but I talked about that before, so just go up a bit if you forget :)


Fourth, different work all week. This week, a couple of carpenter teams needed mud-out crews because the houses they are working in are also being lived in by the homeowners. They have to do each house one room at a time, doing demo, then mudding out, then bleaching, and then finally starting on the carpenter work - insulating, installing drywall and floors, etc. So, this entire week I've been working with the guy from Northwestern at one house with a carpenter team. It has been wonderful to work with some different people and to do some carpenter work. I've done so many new things this week, including cutting and installing insulation, bleaching room by room, and learning to be creative with problem-solving. 


Fifth, leading devotions! The house that I'm currently working at is a very wonderful home. The family's name is Abe. The mother is home a lot, but works in the middle part of the day, so she's usually the first and last person we see. She has a wonderful smile and is very sweet to us even though all we've been doing is demolishing her house room by room. Her son is 10 years old and "rides" horseback on an electronic machine, and is also the best golfer in the region in the 12 and under age group. He said he wants to be as good or better than Tiger Woods one day. I don't know very much about the father, and I've only seen him once or twice. Wayne, the leader of the carpenter team, has been doing devotions every morning with Mrs. Abe. This isn't a normal thing at every house, but I think it is wonderful practice if only to get the homeowner acquainted with the Bible at least a little bit. Yesterday, Wayne asked me to do devotions this morning. I was extremely apprehensive about it since I'm not so great at making speeches, but I said yes and prepared my devotion. I used John 14:27 - "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." I shared with her about how anxious I was about this trip to Japan, and how God gave me His peace, both then and in many other situations. The guy from Northwestern then prayed that the Abe family would know God's peace and would know the God we know.


Sixth, Japanese toilets! Me and a few of the guys are super excited about the toilets that are here in Japan. We've been looking them up online to see how much they are. We especially like the one that is in the Abe's house, and so we've been looking for that specifically. Guess what - we found it! It's about $1400 though, and that doesn't include shipping to the US, which would be at least another $400... I'm trying to decide if it's worth it... :P


Seventh, learning how to use power tools!!! Today, Wayne and the guys taught me how to use three power tools. Normally my friends would wonder if I was lying, but I have proof! Okay, not of the third one, but it was a jig saw... I was so proud of myself!

Alright, I think I'm done for now. Sorry for the suer long blog post today. Hopefully the next few won't be quite so long!

後でお会いしましょう！

See you later!

~Chloe

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

Wow, what a time I've had. Thursday night, the Ellisons, Nate, and I arrived at the Samaritan's Purse Base Camp in Tome. We drove for about 6 hours before we got there, and by the time we arrived it was almost 7pm and dark outside. We had dinner, signed our lives away, had orientation, and got settled all before 10pm. Sleeping was interesting. The womens dormitory (and I imagine the mens as well) has cots for beds, along with a few spare/random futon covers, camping mats, etc. After we got everything situated, Mary Lou and I went to bed on our cots and tried to sleep. Mary Lou said she slept, but I was kept up all night by snoring. The mens dormitory is separated from the womens with a blue tarp stretched over a wooden frame.

Sometime in the dead of night (someone told me later it was around 4:30am), we had another earthquake. I don't know how strong it was, but it felt much stronger than my first one at church on Sunday. The earthquake woke me up, but no one seemed alarmed, so I just tried to calm myself down and go back to sleep.

Friday morning, I woke up at 6, had breakfast at 6:30, group devotions at 6:45, and then individual devotions afterwards. We left for our worksite at 7:30 and arrived at about 8:15 or so. We had lunch at 12:30 – homemade bento boxes made by Samaritan's Purse staff at 4:30am that morning. We began working again after lunch and finally finished up around 4. We got back to the SP base camp around 5 and spent some time relaxing before dinner and sharing time at 6:30. We also said goodbye to the Ellisons as they started the long drive back to Tokyo. After dinner, we had some free time, during which I took a long hot shower and spent some time online checking email and Facebook. Saturday morning was much of the same, except that we were at a different worksite (and we didn't have an earthquake in the wee hours of the morning).

Sunday was different, but first I want to explain what we've been doing at these “worksites”. They are actually houses that were severely damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. We have been in one very specific area so far in Ishinomaki, Miyagi prefecture. The two houses we've worked in have both been very close to the ocean, less than a minute walk away from the seawall. The term for what we've been doing is “mudding out”. Basically, we do demo and cleanup, getting the houses ready for the carpenter teams that are here with SP. So far, I've ripped out walls, vacuumed rafters and attics, and swept up multiple floors that were covered in several inches of dirt mixed in with random debris. We've found things like pots, cow statues, bracelets, a skirt, and other things in this dirt. The dirt we've been working with is mostly dry now; as one of the SP staff members pointed out, it has had almost 12 months to dry out.

Now, back to Sunday. At SP, the mud-out teams get Sunday and Monday off. This is done to accommodate the teams from Japan that can only come for the day on Saturday but desperately want to help the people here.

Even though technically we have Sunday off, Nate and I volunteered at a concert in Ishinomaki. We got to the community center where it was being held at about 9:20, and worked until 11:30 to set up the place for the concert, which started at 2. Then we had a mini worship service with the Bengston family (Lutheran Brethren missionaries), had lunch, and finished setting up by getting the sound stuff all ready (I had fun with that part!!). Then, we enjoyed the concert! The artist performing was named Alfie. She sang a few songs and then shared her testimony, talked about the Good News, and invited people to pray a prayer of salvation. Several people responded positively to her message, and everybody seemed to love the concert itself. Afterwards, we had refreshments ready, and I was kept busy pouring drinks for the locals that attended the concert. There were also ski jackets downstairs for the local people to take if they wanted. Most of them took something. We helped clean up from the concert and then had dinner with the Bengstons and another volunteer named Yoshi at a tonkatsu (pork cutlet) place that was very very yummy, and a great end to a busy but wonderful day :)

Today was a day off for us. This morning I skyped with my mom and my little sister and our homestay student, chatted on facebook with my best friend from home, and am currently am doing laundry as well :)

Tomorrow we go back to work, but this week is the “Tohoku Celebration of Hope with Franklin Graham, so we will be helping out with that later this week.

I have to conclude this post, for I feel it is already much too long, but I will be updating it after the Celebration!

後でお会いしましょう！

See you later!

~Chloe

Hello again, everyone!

I have some wonderful news, and then I'll tell you all about my Tokyo Tour. We have received a departure date! The four of us (Tom and Mary Lou Ellison, Nate Jahnke, and I) will be driving up north to Samaritan's Purse Tome Base Camp tomorrow (Thursday, February 23) morning! The drive is about 6 hours from where we are now, so Tom and Mary Lou will stay there for one night to make sure we're all settled in, and then they will drive back to the house we've all been staying at. Nate and I will stay there until March 15, and Nate will drive back down to Tokyo while I am transferred to another relief organization, although I'm not sure which one that will be quite yet.

Now, onto the Tokyo Tour!  Yesterday (Tuesday), Nate and I went on our Tokyo Tour. The goal was to see as many places in Tokyo as possible and to kind of get our bearings as to where we are now and where other things are in relation to us. It was a fun but long day of riding trains, walking, and enjoying the sights in Tokyo. We went to two observatories - one in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, and the other in Tokyo Tower. Both had amazing views of the city, of which I took many pictures (which will be viewable in a bit since my internet connection is too slow to upload photos). We also visited a shrine in Harajuku and saw a little bit of the Imperial Palace (didn't get any pictures of that, unfortunately).

We did a ton of walking while we were out, so we both came home very tired, very sore, and very ready for bed. 

In other news, today I went to the CRASH Japan headquarters (CRASH stands for Christian Relief Assistance Support Hope and they have been very helpful in the relief efforts up north) and spent some time with a dear friend of my parents who I have been getting to know as well. After some good ramen for lunch out on the town, another friend of mine who is at CRASH as well right now gave me a short tour of the CRASH offices and then we took pictures together! Diane has most of them, but here's one with fellow missionary Roberta Peabody - we are both supported by my home church, Boston Japanese Christian Church.

It was wonderful to be able to spend time with people that I know, and I am especially grateful that I got a chance to see them before I went up north.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new adventure... I am so excited, but also nervous about what I'll be doing when I get there, and what it will be like to live there. Please pray that I can be effective as a worker and that God will work through me to reach the people there.

I can't wait to update you all with the work I will be doing up north! Stay posted for more :)

後でお会いしましょう！

See you later!

~Chloe

Hello again!


I hope this blog is something you all enjoy reading. If there's anything you'd like me to talk about more, feel free to send me an email at chloe.milhous@gmail.com and let me know! I'll try my best to make it interesting.


This morning I woke up at 3 am, fell back asleep, and woke up again at 7:30. When I got up at 8:30, I could see my breath the same way you can when it's cold outside and your breath forms little clouds. My room was 43 degrees F. Now, it's 9:10 and 55 degrees F (I have a heater in my room that I turn on when I get out of bed). Japanese houses in general don't have central heating, so they use kerosene heaters instead. We have to turn them off at night so that no one suffocates at night, etc. So everything gets cold by morning. 


Last night I got to see my aunt and uncle who live here in Tokyo. My aunt came to the station close to me (a ten-minute walk from my house) and we went back to her house. It was only about a 45 minutes train ride. Not bad at all. After we got to their house, we went to play billiards for a while, and then we went to dinner. For dinner we had a bunch of yummy food, one of which was takoyaki, batter with veggies and octopus pieces cooked all together in a ball. It was super yummy! 


I'm having fun studying my Japanese and getting back into Japanese culture, which I missed very much. 


Today I went to Kokobunji Church with Nate (another short term missionary who is living in the same house as me currently - he's here to do disaster relief as well, so we'll be working with each other from time to time during my term) for the afternoon contemporary service. During the message time, which today was a small group bible study style teaching time, I experienced my first ever Japanese earthquake. We looked it up later and it was a 5.1 earthquake located near Fukushima. That was definitely an experience! I've never been very aware of earthquakes since we never got a lot of them in Boston, and if we did, they were not very strong. I'm sure I will be experiencing many more earthquakes during my time here. I'm glad that my first wasn't too bad.


On Tuesday, we're planning to do a "Tokyo Tour" - we'll have a list of places to go to in Tokyo, and we have to get there on our own! That should be a very fun experience! I'll update this blog after we do that, so I'll have something very interesting to write about.

後でお会いしましょう！

See you later!

~Chloe