Day six post earthquake

This shelf was totally empty of paper products on Tuesday.

Well, we're still here, still in Tokyo. And the food situation seems to be improving. Today I was able to buy milk and toilet paper, albeit at different shops. It is amazing how cheerful it makes one to know that I have more than 12 spare rolls of that stuff in the cupboard!

My bike loaded with goods, including precious toilet paper!

Today was Day One of "Marshall School". I have to say we were a little bit disorganised and it didn't go all that smoothly. It didn't help that we were promised another power blackout mid-morning and that didn't occur. Or maybe that did help? Not sure. We just don't know what we can rely on happening. 

This is why we kept our old laptops - you can still play CD-ROMs on them!

I also didn't know what really was expected of me this morning. I went down to the command centre to help the Managing Editor of Japan Harvest. I thought I'd be doing something related to the magazine, but I ended up preparing a document to orientate new volunteers at the command centre. An important document when you consider that the place is very fluid - people coming and going all the time. 

It is incredible, actually, to be a small part of what is going on there. They have a huge vision - to have six or more "base camps" up near the site of the devastation - places where they can send truck loads of supplies for distribution and places where people can work out of to help with the clean-up and restoration work that needs doing. The first one was set up today. But to go with the huge vision is a huge amount of work. They've started this from basically nothing on Sunday. They have donations and offers to volunteer coming in constantly and are trying to process all of that at the same time as basically setting up a big organisation. Amazing to see it in process. Somewhat frustrating too, because there are so many inefficiencies that need to be smoothed out. That is what my boss at the magazine was trying to help with (typical missionary - he's picked up another "hat"). His brain was pretty scrambled and it made it difficult for him to give me things to do. 

Pre-dinner wresting. Watch those paper walls boys!

Anyway, I'd promised David I'd come home at lunch time to help with the boys. At this time of flux and change it is extra difficult to be their parents and we really need to support one another. The boys really appreciate predictability of routine and that is something that has been sorely lacking in the last six days. In fact today it looked a bit better because no big announcements were made. We'd suspected our middle son was particularly upset by the changes in how long the school would be closed for - and this evening when I finally got him to sit down and do some writing the first thing he wrote about was how long the school would be closed kept changing! He got really excited about writing and is looking forward to continuing the "What happened after the earthquake" story tomorrow. Sounds like a bit of a chip off the old block, doesn't it?

This afternoon David went off to school for a couple of hours to be available to any students who came in. Our 11 y.o. went gleefully to an "open art room" time for a couple of hours. He loves art. And while they were gone the other two played happily in their room while I sorted out the three articles I was writing for our mission's international magazine.

So schooling tomorrow will be better. Our eldest son has come up with a couple of ideas of things to do that will keep him busy for a while. Our youngest son still has things to finish from what the teacher sent out today. And in the afternoon I'll troop them all down for some art "therapy" at school.

Tomorrow will be somewhat similar, except that I'll be working mostly from home. Trying to pull together a magazine of stories related to the recent events is a mammoth task that sounds way beyond me, but it is similar to the task that faces those in the CRASH command centre. They've never done it before, but are trusting God to provide the strength.

Emotionally we're feeling a bit up and down. No predictability has been very difficult. David realised he's temporarily lost a role - that of full-time classroom teacher - and that has made him feel a bit rocky. We've had friends and colleagues temporarily head home or to another country. That is not easy. 

The number of daily visitors here have shot up since Friday.

Something I've been watching with amazement is the statistics on how many people visit this blog. It is kind-of nice that so many people are reading this, but I wish the circumstances were different.

Tonight is cold. It is supposed to drop below freezing here, which means even colder in the disaster zone. My heart goes out to those hundreds of thousands who don't have enough food in their tummies or enough warmth to help them sleep tonight and probably a heart-ache deep enough to sink any ordinary person into despair.