Typhoon Hagibis If you have been on Facebook or watching world news you probably heard about the typhoon that hit japan at the beginning of October. It turned out to be the most devastating typhoon since 1958; it had wind speed up to 260 kmph/160 mph and as of today killed 89 people and 7 are still missing. The country was still recovering from typhoon Faxai which is why the damages were so bad this time around. Hagibis triggered a tornado in Ichihara City and a 5.7 earthquake in Chiba Prefecture. Through all this craziness were preparing for the worst: filling up all jugs/bottles with water, making a big thing of soup so if the power went out would have food, we filled up the bathtub so when the water got shut off we could still go to the bathroom, and of course make sure all electronics were fully charged at tall time so we can keep up on the news. Praise God we didn't have to evacuate or the school didn't flood; Praise God our power and water stayed on!! We were part of the lucky ones. Not everyone was as fortunate as us. Lot of towns were flooded and destroyed. hundreds of families lost everything. Camp Amagi Since I have been at Shion the kids talk about how they are so excited for camp. The day finally came for us as a school to leave for camp. The energy was through the roof the whole three days! We rented a bus that was about to fit 16 students, 3 parents, and 3 teachers, 2 dogs, our sound system, games, and all of our luggage. In my mind I was kinda expecting it to be like the camp I've gone to for the past 5 or so years, but not to my surprise it was nothing like that. It was an old Japanese christian camp that is up in the mountains; kind of hidden from the community. You had to wear indoor slippers because you don't wear your outdoor shoes inside, they had traditional Japanese rooms and beds, they even had public baths. During the first night we had a huge bonfire; during the bonfire we threw papers in to it. On those papers were labels that others or ourselves had put on us and it was time to burn those labels, get rid of them, and give them to God. After we burned them the kids ran around like crazy animals playing tag and just being themselves with no worries. After a while we all came back together, sang some worship songs and prayed over each other and the spirit lead us. During day two we had two speakers from Montana . One of the men told us how he works at this place kind of like a group home; where parents send their daughters because they don't know how to help them anymore. He showed us this demonstration: one of our students were in the middle and there were four chair surrounding him. The speaking was telling us how this student didn't use to have these chairs around him (the chair represented the walls that were up in his life), but with events that had happened in his life he started to put wall up one at a time. As each wall were up he felt more isolated and alone; he felt that because I am distancing myself no one can hurt me however when you are alone no one can help you get back up. The speaker was telling how his teams job was to care for these girls by figuring out why they put these walls up not just at the surface level up down at the roots and to pulls those roots up and ever let them back in the ground again. His talk turned out to be a pretty heavy and luckily we have a fun day planned. We had a japanese style BBQ and then we had p.e./games. To be truthful the games were my favorite part because I got to teach them a bunch of games that my youth group play at winter camp. It felt good to be able to see the smiles on their faces and laughter in the air because I know I won't be able to see that at camp this February but these kids made it more than worth it!! Prayer Requests
Worship Songs At Shion
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AuthorTatum Van Horn Archives
November 2019
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