When TouhokuHELP was established on March 18th 2011, the following two things were assigned as its duty. One of them was “Giving out relief aid for the reconstructing of churches”, and the other one was “Gathering, sorting out, and transmitting information” necessary for relief aid. The former was called “Kerygma”, and Donation Allocation Committee was made charge of it. The latter was called “Diakonia”, and “Tohoku HELP Secretariat” was put in charge. It was feared soon after the disaster that the relief aid might not reach to small denomination or to a stand-alone small church.

  Many churches which suffered from the tsunami disaster were such small “God’s house”. We wished to become a point of contact for these kinds of churches. And Tohoku HELP having the following principle delivered the collected contribution.

  1. Deliver the contribution as the form of “prayer”. Hence, contribution should be distributed quickly.
  2. Contribution should be delivered regardless of denomination and sect. However, these should be distributed first to relatively smaller denomination or churches.
  3. Understand the situation of churches as much as possible, and wait for them if it takes time to plan the church reconstruction. Last December Touhoku HELP made an end on its primary project “Keygma”. The “Sea side Bible Chapel” to which first decision of extending relief aid was made, is currently still in a struggle to purchase land for reconstructing its church building. We made a decision to end the collection of contribution for the church reconstruction, but still waiting to give them relief aid. Thanking for all the precious fruit of “prayer”, I will hereby introduce the report written by Reverend Yoshihisa Akiyama, Executive board member of Donation Allocation Committee (Japan Alliance Christ Church, Sendai Nozomi Church). These are for your perusal.

(written by Secretary General, Naoya Kawakami)