Grace Lee was having lunch with Udagawa Michiko as Samaritan’s Purse volunteers surrounded them at one of our construction sites in Kesennuma, Japan. The team had been working all day in the hot sun, cleaning up Mr. and Mrs. Konno’s yard, and it was time for a meal break.




The first floor of Udagawa’s home was flooded during the tsunami that struck on March 11, and Samaritan’s Purse helped her by mudding it out a few weeks before. The volunteers are calling it “the miracle house” because most of the surrounding homes were destroyed.

Grace, who is fluent in Japanese, became friends with Udagawa while we worked on the property, and gave her a Manga Bible—God’s Word in the style of a Japanese comic book.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: Samaritan's Purse is looking for skilled carpenters for rebuilding projects in Japan and around the world. Click here for a list of our current projects.

Over a lunch of jasmine rice and ginger chicken, Udagawa said she felt she needed to deal with her sin before she could read the Bible. Grace explained that Jesus is the almighty one who can forgive her sins, and that she could pray to Him and read His word at any time.

Although Udagawa is not ready to believe in Jesus yet, she says that Christian people are great because they treat everyone the same.

“I feel happy and blessed that I am alive today,” she said. “I’m thankful for all the prayers of the volunteers.”

Before Udagawa left to go back to the shelter where she has been living for the past five months, she hugged Grace and then touched her heart. “Happy,” she said in English with a big smile on her face.

Udagawa is just one of the many Japanese homeowners we’ve helped who smile and say they are happy that people from all over the world have come to help them recover from the tsunami.




After our initial phase of emergency relief, distributing 93 tons of supplies through ministry partners in the tsunami-affected areas, Samaritan’s Purse began cleaning out flooded homes. In July, we launched a program to repairing damaged houses.




Since we began in April, 1,647 volunteers have helped over 170 families. Samaritan’s Purse is providing housing and supplies for volunteers from countries all over the world, including South Korea, Brazil, and the Philippines. We have also sent three volunteer construction teams from the United States.




In every area where we are working, staff and volunteers are finding big and small ways to be a witness for Jesus.

“In seeing the tsunami, I learned that God does everything for a purpose,” said staff team leader Cameron Hartman. “The tsunami was a wave of water, and I’ve just been praying that a wave of grace would come over the Japanese people.”

Tim Smith, associate pastor of Koca Baptist Church in Okinawa, Japan, has led two volunteer trips with Samaritan’s Purse and says he will continue sending teams as long as there is interest in his congregation.

“Samaritan’s Purse has given us an avenue to be able to serve,” he said. “It makes it easier for us to serve alongside them. I appreciate them making this available for the church worldwide.”

Carrie Wood and her 17-year-old son, Calen, came with a group from Koca Baptist Church. Originally from the States, they have lived in Japan for eight years since Carrie’s husband is serving in the military overseas.




“It was a good opportunity to come and serve the people of Japan,” Carrie said, “but more importantly to come and serve the Lord … to get dirty for God.”

Carrie and Calen were scooping out mud and cleaning floors at Kyoko Onodera’s apartment complex on August 16.

Kyoko lost her husband and son in the tsunami and now has to keep up the family business of renting out apartments. Since she was busy looking for her husband and son’s missing bodies after the tsunami, she didn’t have time to clean up the property.




“I have received tremendous help from the volunteers,” she said. “When I went through the tsunami, I thought that there is no God, because if God is here how can this kind of calamity ever happen? That was my first impression. After I received tremendous help from the volunteers reaching out their hands to help my family, now I know that I am not living in this world alone.

“I just want to stand once again with all my strength, and I just want to move forward. I do not have anything to give the volunteers, but if they see me moving forward, that can be my gift to them.”

By the end of the week, Kyoko’s apartments were cleaned out and ready to be rebuilt.

Albert Knights’ crew from Sewell, New Jersey, was the second group of U.S. volunteers we sent to Japan. Since he heard about the destruction from the tsunami, he has been rallying churches together to send construction teams.




He served with Samaritan’s Purse for the first time in 2008, when we sent a team to Galveston, Texas, to respond to Hurricane Ike. The experience gave him a new passion to use his construction skills for disaster relief, and on the next trip to Atlanta, Georgia he brought his son Bryan.

At the time, Bryan had been struggling with a drug addiction and had been in and out of jail. But everything changed when he met Samaritan’s Purse volunteers.

“I accepted Christ when I was younger, but I never really felt it until I came on one of the Samaritan’s Purse trips,” Bryan said. “They were very open hearted and no one turned their back on you, or judged you. Everyone at Samaritan’s Purse was there for one purpose—to serve the Lord. It made me open up my life and become humble. Ever since then, I’ve full-blown turned my life around. I’ve gotten off of drugs and out of trouble.”

Albert sold his motorcycle, quit his job as a union electrician, and started his own construction business with Bryan so they could devote more time to serving with Samaritan’s Purse disaster relief.

Albert also opened an account to raise money so that churches all over New Jersey could send volunteer teams. Three years later, 15 churches have joined him in sending relief workers.

When they heard about the tsunami, they knew they wanted to be a part of the response.

“I’ve been so humbled on this trip,” Bryan said. “I’ve always had to have the best of the best, and this has just taught me that you can have anything that you want. You can be rich, but it can all be taken away from you in six minutes.”

The tsunami has broken down cultural and spiritual barriers, giving us an opportunity to reach the hearts of the Japanese with the Gospel.

“In one town we are working in, 1,300 people died,” crew leader Larry Nanninga said. “Pain is everywhere, but since we’ve been working here, we’ve seen laughter coming back to Japan.

“When you don’t speak the language, you rely on your body language and your smiles to communicate. Our prayer every day is that we want them to see Jesus’ love and true Christ-like community in our lives.”

Samaritan's Purse , Japan , Emergency Relief , Waves of Grace