Our ”Touhoku HELP” was born on March 18th,2011，just one week after the giant earthquake and tsunami of March 11th . It was our small attempt to take the channel of support and donations for gathering and sorting out information regarding the disaster． Initially we thought the organization would last only one month.

However，the activities have extended month by month with the ncouragement of the people concerned.
In May, the Voice for the continuation of the secretariat became like a consensus of the concerned people.

Since last month，we have worked hard building the organization as a body and finally forming it.

Here we have renewed our home page and report our new organization and activities. You may click the following URL to see our recent reports. We really need your continuous support and prayers for our activities.

Through this home page we hope to inform you on our up-to-date reports from now on.

I urge you to remember our activities for the affected people. We send you our deepest appreciation and prayers for God's protection.

Touhoku HELP : http://tohokuhelp.com/index.html

 

The major work of Touhoku HELP has been office work and meetings. We have not yet been involved much in the support of the victims directly through field work. 0ur job and responsibility is mainly f an administrative nature. This includes building up the frame work of activity，discussing and sorting out the content of needed discussions and keeping minutes of the meetings.

Our home page “Touhoku HELP” is http://tohokuhelp.com/index.html

Please find the guest book here. Besides meeting and consulting with visitors, we also have various meetings outside the office. In fact the managing director is having many meetings outside of the office.

For example, there are many records of meetings in my notebook from last week.

Monday : The staff meeting of the secretariat and board meeting of Touhoku HELP.

Tuesday : Consultation on the home page management with an out sourced company.

Tuesday evening : Meeting with the members of the National Christian Council (NCC) in Tokyo.

Wednesday : Meeting with people of the organization called “Mission 21” from Switzerland.

Thursday morning : Meeting with members of an orchestra from Germany. After that, we had a consultation with a representative from Wakabayashi Help, one of our cooperative organizations.

Afternoon : Meeting with a minister of the Rissho Kosei-kai (Buddhist) Sendai church and the chairperson of a liaison conference of religious bodies in Miyagi prefecture to discuss the training program that we will plan for October 19th，

Evening : The general meeting of the Sendai Christian Alliance.

Friday afternoon : Conference with Samaritan’s Purse，After holding the above conference, we discussed the future plan of support by the city administration for the people at the sites of the temporary housing units.

In our various meetings and conferences we are repeatedly speaking about the present activities of Touhoku HELP.

Through this process we have realized the real problems and challenges that we have encountered. What is our problem that we have faced?　It is probably the theme of “relief and mission”. It is pointing out the need of “spiritual support”. There are two aspects for spiritual support in the Western world; “psychological support” and “religious support”. We thought on the matter of the later one，“religious support” in the context of ”relief and mission”. When we talk about “Seelsorge＝care of soul” to the visitors from Switzerland they seemed moved and seemed to understand deeply. Yet we feel another word for this concept is
“spiritual care”. It is said that religious support is “Care for the heart”. However， it is not easy to provide this. We believe that we are facing this challenge now. We have realized this now through the various dialogues and meetings we have held.

Reflecting on our past experiences，we remembered that during the great Hanshin earthquake almost all religious groups and bodies were propagating their religion，and were refused and rejected by the victims. It is very dangerous to hurt the dignity of victims when “relief “is used as a tool for “mission”. 0n the other hand, if religious organizations involve in relief activity doing nothing for religious activity， it may be asked what is its identity as a religious organization. There exists quite a difficult problem and issue here.

Under the suffering from the earthquake， the tsunami， and the disaster of the nuclear power plant， many organization and group faces the question of “relief and mission”. There may be many failures and short comings. Yet we have already started the projects.

So in our meetings and consultations with concerned people and organizations we should not forget their opinions and views. We would like to support projects through trial and error.