Sōko Diving
I want to dedicate this post to my good friend Ian, with whom I have shared many… well, we’ll call them “rescue and recovery adventures.” I hope I have enriched your frugal soul as much as you have enriched mine.
With the installation of the internet connection at the Ube ministry center complex today, our temporary new home is now pretty much set up. It has been really neat to see how God has provided the things we need without requiring a huge outlay of funds and has enabled us to get things set-up fairly quickly. One of the big reasons for that is something called a sōko (倉庫). Sōko means warehouse in Japanese and is the name that has been applied to the two storage buildings here on the property. Although we didn’t have the opportunity to see the property in its original condition, Chuck (our team leader) told us that it was as if a time warp had occurred. The Lighthouse Church took possession of the building in August of 2008, almost exactly two years after it had been abruptly vacated. We have been told that the desks were still in place, the calendars were still on the wall, and personal belongings were still scattered around the building as if they expected to return to work the next day.
Ube Ministry Center Soko
One of the first tasks that the church had to tackle was collecting and sorting through all the stuff. A few things were kept for future use, but much of it was stuck in bags or just piled in the two storage buildings on the property for future disposal. When we arrived and moved into the house on site, Chuck told us that we were welcome to take anything that we thought we could use. Theresa and I figured this meant the bags intended for disposal as well. Because of the small spaces here, the Japanese don’t have a lot of room to store junk and thus often are quick to discard things even if they would be useful. After a while, we had found so much good stuff in the “trash” that we nicknamed it “sōko diving” (think dumpster diving).
All told though, between the sōkos, the 100 yen stores (more on those later), and the exchange of unneeded household items between the Christar members here, we have been really blessed to see all the ways God has provided for our household set-up.
Please pray for wisdom for us and the rest of the Ube team as we continue to clean up the ministry center and prepare for renovations in April. Pray that we would be able to find inexpensive, creative ways to enhance the usability of the space.