Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Other images of Japan








Japan, September 2-21

These past 3 weeks, we travelled to 日本 (Japan) for Pri and 和男s (Kazuo's)first visit. A lot of firsts, including first Shinkansen ride; first Pino ice-cream; first breast-feeding at Ginkakuji (one of the Kyoto's main temple gardens); first view of the 日本 Sea; first time to Nojiri lake; first onsen bathing; first time to meet Daniel's friends; and many more! We will miss this beautiful country and our amazing friends (especially all the bachans/grandmas loving on Zeke). We will miss our family here. We will miss incredible hospitality and generosity of everyone. And we will pray for hearts to be softened by the good news of Gospel.

We are excited for our journey to Itajuba, Brazil that will take us, Lord willing, to the end of November. We wonder what they will think of the seaweed we are bringing. . . .

For even MORE pictures, check it out the link for Flickr pictures at the highlighted word HERE
Mum and Dad and Mae e Pai: let me know if you're still having trouble.







Thursday, August 18, 2011

Upstate and Cross State




This past weekend, we travelled to Rochester, NY, to talk to churches about our upcoming medical ministry in Angola. This was our first time sharing with groups outside our church. We enjoyed the questions and interactions that people had. We also took the opportunity to see old friends and urban waterfalls.
We then met Tia Malita & co just south of the Canadian border (our passports are still being held for the Angolan visa application) after realizing that Hamilton, Ontario was a lot closer than we thought. Zeke fit right in as a family member of his blue-eyed cousins!

And finally, we stopped by Pittsburgh to dig dirt with the nephews and niece, ride simulators at the Carnegie Science Center, and eat the Stouts' delicious food.



Thank you to everyone for opening your homes, ears and hearts!
Love,
the Familia Cummings

PS, if you'd like to see more photos of the trip, check it out here

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Orientation Week 7/18 - 7/22



This week, we visited Boone, NC for an orientation at Samaritan's Purse headquarters along with 10 other doctors and their families. We will all serve 2 years in various hospitals and clinics overseas. Here are a few images from the week.


Pizza party in celebration of 7 years

If only i could get off this bed, i'd be close to my escape. . . .

the Daily Dirty Diaper Wash

hiking near the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway

quality time

sunset in Boone

Monday, April 18, 2011

Danieru no tabi




Dear all,

Thanks so much for your prayers and encouragement this past month while I spent a week working in northeast Japan. It was a challenging trip and much shorter than I expected! Now that I have had a few days to begin to collect my thoughts, I will share some words and pictures with you.

Most of the time was in Ishinomaki, a city of 160,000 with one of the largest damages of the northeast coastline: roughly 5000 dead or missing and 20,000 in shelters. My brother Luke drove Yoko Sugimoto and I there from Tokyo the day after my arrival on April 1. (Yoko is a wonderful, compassionate lady who lives in Texas and carries a nursing license from Japan and the US—very useful).

Places in Ishinomaki left unrecognizable
driving the streets

Yoko Sugimoto!

Yoko-san and I started in Ishinomaki with the Red Cross , serving at Watanoha elementary school shelter. The clinic on the first floor primarily served an ambulatory population with acute and chronic concerns. Yoko and I went around on the 2nd and 3rd floor of the school as well as in the gymnasium to see any who were too weak or depressed to go to the clinic. Most of the people did not wish to complain and sometimes it took a good number of direct questions to get out what illnesses they were suffering. Yoko patiently translated my broken medical communication into a language people could understand and we had opportunities to converse without time pressures. Regarding resources, while the medicines I had brought were not accepted by the Japanese Red Cross, access to medicines was decent and most medications could be obtained within a week for chronic conditions.

Medical teams preparing for clinic

As the medical situation seemed relatively stabilizing in Ishinomaki, I left after the 2nd day to see if there were needs further south while Yoko-san stayed to keep helping the Red Cross. I gladly accepted Luke’s invitation to return to Ishinomaki to help the Takahashi family clean out their tsunami-soaked store after learning from contacts south of Watari in Souma that there was not urgent medical needs in that region. Luke had been walking and praying the day before, asking the Lord to lead him to someone in need of His love... Shun Takahashi (the father) then rode up on his bike and greeted Luke in English, thanking him for what he was doing. They then struck up a conversation and are now friends and still working together!

Help with providing resources for the task of cleaning up had been provided by several organizations including Samaritan’s Purse. They have been in Sendai since very early in the aftermath, and an incredible supply resource for churches and Christians wanting to reach out materially to their neighbors in need. From basic hygiene kits, soap to tarps and then transitioning to “muck out” products—wheel barrows, shovels, brushes. . . they were even providing bicycles to help people with transportation in their neighborhoods. We took some of their supplies with us to Ishinomaki for the store cleanup.


Samaritan's Purse warehouse

Like so many others others, the Takahashi’s accepted their need to manage the mess/destruction in stride, but were also apprehensive about the future months after the assistance might dry up. Food, they said, was easy to obtain; their businesses and livelihood would not be. Luke and others are hoping to remain committed to them as a family and community.

With that in mind, we returned the next day with Joey, Taku and Dad with even more supplies for the neighborhood and were able to put a bigger dent in the store’s cleanup. Dad, the relentless one-man cleanup machine, was an amazing member of the team. The Takahashi’s generously provided us with meals and shared their survival stories. Shun especially opened up and shared his thoughts and concerns.


The cleanup crew

We spent much time talking and sharing. And at the end of the day, we left each other enriched by our time together and more hopeful for the future. This was personal ministry. Sharing Christ in word and deed. Explaining the reasons for our hope while shoveling dirt out of store floors. While I know there were opportunities that I missed to embody Gospel living during the trip, I am grateful for the ones I did take.

The last day in the Miyagi Prefecture, Dad, Yoko-san (rejoining us the night before in Ishinomaki) and I drove south of Watari to another hinanjyo (shelter) to provide supplies requested. While our contact was nowhere to be found, we were able to leave the food and other items at Pastor Hayashi’s home return to Sendai in time to visit Hisako-san (a friend of Mom’s) in the hospital. That you can pray for her, let me share with you her story. Hisako-san has been a friend of Mum’s for over 15 years and was scheduled for a partial gastrectomy the following day for stomach cancer. The surgery had been originally scheduled for March 12 but the earthquake and tsunami affected the hospital she was supposed to have been at. She is wrestling with God as an all powerful and personal Lord, and is yet to believe Him as the one who can redeem our wrongs. We were able to share, listen and pray with her about her upcoming surgery and it was an especially encouraging time for me to hear Dad speak about the assurance Christ gives us through our fears.

Unable to sleep in my chair on the flight back to the States, I was taken to, as Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said, the borderlands between Medicine and the Church. Let me explain: in the first years of medical school, I was taught the importance of treating the “whole person…” but the Church and religion was compartmentalized into another department of medicine. If medicine couldn’t fix the person, then perhaps giving them a little dose of spirituality couldn’t hurt. The paradigm still remains in medicine “treat the mind and body.” Medicine will always come up short in healing the whole person, however, because the care of souls is beyond its purview. I’d even suggest that only Christianity can care for the “whole person.” I could ramble on, but I’ll leave this with the apostle Luke’s recounting of ten lepers to illustrate (also reflected on by Lloyd-Jones in a booklet my mother-in-law gave me over Christmas). In Luke 17, we read of 10 lepers who are quarantined to the outskirts of society because of their disease. They cry out to Jesus to heal them, and he does. Yet, only the Samaritan foreigner among them grasps the significance of the miracle and returns to praise Jesus. The Samaritan is the only one actually understanding that Jesus gave him more than just a return to health and participation in society. By being reconciled to a right relationship with God, he is made whole. Like the other nine, many patients, and many of the Japanese I spoke with, desire healing in a way that would re-establishes them to society, to normalcy, to routine. There is nothing wrong with that. But there is an even greater desire we ought to pray for! The immediate needs of healing physical illnesses or tsunami-ravaged lives should not obscure our ultimate need for restoration to a right relationship to God.

We need to bow before God as our Maker, the one who forgives us and heals our brokenness completely. It is a gift to care for so many who suffer, but humanitarianism and medicine will never ultimately address our relationship with God... and that is, more than anything else, what needs restoration.

Please continue to pray for Japan. Pray for the Takahashi’s; pray for their neighborhood; pray for the Watanoha refugees; pray for those who are sick; pray for the health of those who care for those who are in need; but pray for something greater than cures for sicknesses or restoration of ravaged neighborhoods. Pray for their hearts. Pray for my heart and yours. We need a right relationship with God. We need to worship our Maker: Love who walked among us; who suffered our sins so we could be restored to wholeness. Please pray. Even if just this once. God listens as we come to him in worship.

Your brother, Daniel

For these pictures and more, please check out the flickr link below (sorry if this fails to hyperlink for you):

PS, apologies for the Christian jargon.

Big Arigato! to Dad, Luke and Chieko!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

working together in galmi

this was a culmination of our work together: daniel diagnosing an ectopic pregnancy in clinic and our taking her to the operating room together!