Thanks for thinking and praying for our safety. As we have been monitoring the situation in general and the Fukushima power plant in particular, our mission has been discussing possible evacuation plans with our Home Office since Tuesday last week and what it would look like. Elaine came to Kansai (Osaka) area on Friday for the Kansai school board meeting and to deal with possible train delays was planning to stay until Saturday (and packed to stay longer if necessary). When events changed suddenly on Friday with US and other nation’s embassy decisions one missions mandating that their people relocate to areas south of Nagoya. One European country mandated that all their citizens leave so the missionaries had no choice. Most missions had decided to allow their missionaries to have the freedom to leave the Tokyo area if they so desired (as Converge Worldwide).
As we were dealing with scheduled power outages daily, rail service delays and interruptions and dealing with other issues in Tokyo, that God provided me with a full tank of gas for the car, and as our presence was not required to be in Tokyo to do our work we decided to temporarily relocate to the Kansai area. I drove all night from Tokyo leaving at 12am to avoid traffic backups.
We are in Nara city with Lori Harms where they are not experiencing these shortages and issues in Tokyo. Barring major events, we hope to be back in Machida before this Saturday. Being here just one day has allowed me to observe and research the relief response from here. As there are generally no shortages, shipping things from this area for the near future seems better than from Tokyo. There are no lines for gasoline in this area for example.