Day 15, Travel Day, Osaka to Iwakuni

Everyone was up this morning at 7:30am for breakfast at 8, and time to pack and clean up the church, then walk to where the bus would pick us up (it is too big to park in front of BJ’s church) for the trip to Iwakuni.  We drove for 2 hours, ate lunch, drove for another 2 hours and had a quick pit stop, then 1 more hour to the base.

One would think that on a travel day, that there would not be anything substantive to report.  Well, not so as God showed up big time in the most unusual way.  It happened at the first truck stop where we were doing lunch.  Gil was deciding between an ice cream and Starbucks and then chose the ice cream.  Then, he decided he wanted Starbucks too.  Paul decided to accompany Gil to the Starbucks instead of back to the bus.  As Gil went to order his drink, Paul went to sit with the others.  The Starbucks employee (Sarah-Japanese), speaking perfect English, asked Gil if he was going to Iwakuni with the girls.  She asked because Gil “happened” to be wearing his Iwakuni shirt.  It turns out that she grew up in Iwakuni, and her mom still worked on the base.  Gil thought this was so interesting, he introduced Paul to her.  Well, it gets better.  Paul recognized Sarah’s last name and told her that she had been led to the Lord by Paul’s parents!  She said, “Oh, you mean Papa Gizzi?”  So she was very familiar with who Paul’s dad was.  What are the odds!?  A random truck stop, and a Starbucks employee whose Mom was led to the Lord by Paul’s parents.  God is so good!

The second leg of our ride found us holding our second hynack session.  For full discussion of hynacks, see blog for the last travel day.  In short, we accuse each other of cultural faux pas, or just regular silly things.  You will have to check with your individual team member for details as these were internal things and/or a “you had to be there” kind of thing.

We arrived on the base and checked in with no problem.  With us on the bus was Oksana.  She is the community services liaison for the base who helps coordinate the details of our visit.  She made sure we had our individual passes, and gave us instructions for eating, getting around, and the dress code.  It is VERY strict on the base.  Among others, no sandals (must be tennis shoes or the like), no shorts above mid-thigh, no muscle shirts or spaghetti straps, and since we are eating in the mess hall this year with military personnel instead of the food court, no sportswear of ANY kind.  We were not expecting to eat there.  They had not told us that so some were not prepared.  We are scrambling to see that everyone has something appropriate.  Our rooms are another story too.  We were all looking forward to the individual rooms with air conditioning were we could get the occasional respite from the heat and humidity.  Well, there is a HUGE amount of construction going on on the base, which includes our dorms.  The air conditioning, programmed to go no lower than 70 degrees, does not do even that.  Temperature in the rooms when we arrived were between 80-86.  Most of the rooms could get no better than 78-80 degrees.  Just one more thing to deal with.  At least the weather report for Tuesday is only 85 degrees with 60% humidity.  Pray for our endurance.

After settling in our rooms, we left for a 15 minute walk to the mess hall for dinner.  Nothing like working off the dinner BEFORE you eat it.  After dinner, a short staff meeting and then a team meeting going over the general details of our 3 days here and specific details for tomorrow.  We closed the evening with a time of sharing and prayer led by Susan.

Pictures

Day 15 Video Montage (short, we didn't do much)