Paola Itikawa served with Samaritan’s Purse in Japan in December. Contributing authors to the blog include Sharon Koh and Ted Ip. Photos are by Peien Liu, Sterling Miller, and Jeremy Chan.

My journey with Samaritan’s Purse started earlier this year when my pastor, Sharon, was in Brazil for a mission trip. At that time, I was preparing to study in Japan. A couple of months ago, I found out that Pastor Sharon was bringing a team to serve in Japan.




We arranged to meet up in Tokyo, but the conversation ended with an invitation to join the team. She told me I could really help with Japanese translation.

”Uh oh,” I thought, “Please, don’t rely on my Japanese. It’s not very good.”

I wasn’t trying to be humble, really, because I didn’t feel qualified. But our God doesn’t always ask us to be ready. He asks us to be ready with a heart to serve.

I’m grateful to the Lord for allowing my path to cross with Pastor Sharon’s again. This time, it was on the other side of the globe! I am especially grateful that she brought with her a whole team of wonderful people. I feel like I can call them my family now. It has been a great privilege to serve with them!

For two days, we volunteered with Samaritan’s Purse and participated in their relief efforts. We did demolition work in preparation for rebuilding at Mr. Otomo’s house in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. We broke down his flooded walls, removed wood flooring, and collected rubble from under the house.




Mr. Otomo is a genki (Japanese for “energetic”) 80-year-old man with very kind eyes. His house was not too far from the coast. The tsunami hit about 12-feet high in his town, washing away belongings but not memories.

I thought this would just be manual labor with no need to think or feel. At first, it was hard to see an 80-year-old man have to rebuild his house, but having Mr. Otomo around and working amongst us was an amazing experience.

We were able to show the love of Christ through our actions beyond the language barriers. We may sometimes think we are just doing physical work, but the thing is our God is a creative God. When He wants to talk to His people, it can be through His Spirit, a stranger’s simple smile, or even as we experienced with Mr. Otomo, cleaning up a tsunami survivor’s home.




Later on, we met Larry, the site manager from Samaritan’s Purse. He picked up a piece of drywall that was laying on the ground and said: “This is our pulpit – the tsunami may have broken down the walls of people’s houses, but it also broke down the walls of people’s hearts.”

It’s been a huge blessing to see how God is showing His mercy and love to the people of Japan by working through us to rebuild their communities and give them hope for the future.

I praise the Lord for the privilege of witnessing what He is doing and what He will still do in Japan.

Samaritan's Purse , Japan , A Heart to Serve

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