Lutherans in Japan and the Earthquake and LCMS Resources

Areas Affected by Earthquake in Japan

As anyone who has access to world news knows, Japan had a devastating earthquake of 8.9 (some reports upgrading it to 9.1) yesterday 11 March 2011, predominately affecting the city of Sendai. More destruction was caused by the tsunami and now the Fukushima nuclear power plant is facing difficulties with reports of radiation leaks and an explosion. While the death toll is officially low for a disaster of this magnitude, officially at this time around 1,000, reports of 10,000 or more people missing are now being reported.

Whirlpool created by tsunami after earthquake in Japan

At this early stage of the diaster, the situation can change rapidly. The LCMS has missionaries in Japan and there are a couple of Lutheran churches in Japan, one of which the Japanese Lutheran Church (NRK) is a partner with the Missouri Synod. Yesterday, we determined that our missionaries were safe as is the staff of our partner church (read the report from the LCMS website).

President Harrison encourages prayer and support for Japan from VimeoLCMS on Vimeo.

Yesterday, we had an hour and a half conference call led by President Harrison with LCMS staff located worldwide (with a good portion of the staff who respond to disasters located in the Dominican Republic for the 5th anniversary of the LCMS' mission work there.) President Harrison began the meeting with prayer for those affected by the earthquake in Japan, for LCMS missionaries, and for our partner church and other Lutheran churches in Japan. He pledged to assist Lutherans in Japan as well as their neighbors as appropriate and according to the ability and capacity of the LCMS. Below is a bulletin insert suitable for use in church from the LCMS.

Japan2011_insert


Pastor Makito Masaki, a Lutheran pastor and President of the Kobe Lutheran Theological Seminary in Kobe, Japan, reported by email:

First of all, Kobe is located far enough from the northeast Japan
where the earthquakes and tsunamis hit repeatedly yesterday.
I have been busy gathering information whether my friends are safe or not.
There are few people who have not responded to my e-mails, but there
can be situations that they lost their access to the internet
connection.

Towns and villages, and even good size of cities have been destroyed
and wiped away because of the earthquakes and tsunamis.
It is said that the earthquakes that we are still experiencing since
yesterday are very rare and unusual ones for its size and
repeatedness.

At least three big earthquakes occurred consecutively, that made the
coastline as long as 300 km has experienced the vast and fatal damage.
We now know the nuclear power plants in that area have problems of
heat and burst, and people around the area have been evacuated.
So, the suffering is just started and even the earthquakes are not yet settled.
We are working on gathering ideas of how we can help and encourage people there.
Pray for congregations in the area that spend the first Sunday after
the Ash Wednesday tomorrow.

Makito Masaki

The Japan Lutheran Church (NRK) is the partner church of the LCMS in Japan. 

History:

The mission of the Japan Lutheran Church officially began in September 1948 when The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod World Mission installed the first missionary to Japan and declared the start of the Japan Mission. In 1968, the self-governing Japan Lutheran Church was established and it became self-supporting in 1976. The JLC maintains a close relationship with LCMS through joint projects based on mission cooperation. JLC celebrated its 50th mission anniversary in September 1998. (From the ILC Website). 

The President of the Japan Lutheran Church is Rev. Yutaka Kumei. The church has about 3,000 members and 30 pastors. It is based in Tokyo.

President Kumei, who I had opportunity to meet in Korea in Fall 2010

Here is a webpage that provides more information on Lutherans in Japan.

To donate to the LCMS Relief Effort in Japan, please click here.

Chilean Lutheran church assesses damage, plans post-quake response

From the LCMS World Relief and Human Care Website:

Many streets in Chile are closed because of the danger of buildings falling down and the huge amounts of debris that fell during the Feb. 27 earthquake. Photo courtesy of Miguel Luis Allamand Aldunate.

As he travels to areas hit hardest by the earthquake and tsunami, Rev. Carlos Schumann, president of the Confessional Lutheran Church of Chile (IELCHI) sees tremendous destruction but also opportunities to pray and share the Gospel with hurting survivors.

“We have a lot of work here in evaluating the situation and determining what steps we should follow,” Schumann said in a March 3 e-mail to LCMS World Relief and Human Care's Rev. Carlos Hernandez.
One Chilean Lutheran pastor lost his home in the Feb. 27 disaster that killed more than 800 people and left some 2 million people homeless. LCMS World Relief and Human Care continues to monitor needs in Chile and stay in close touch with the LCMS partner church.
“God's timing is not ours,” said LCMS World Relief and Human Care Executive Director Rev. Matthew Harrison. “God's ways and thoughts are never ours. But all trials and struggles happen that He may 'conform us to the image of His Son' (F.C., S.D. XI.48). The need in Chile is enormous. And we will come alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ as they reach out to their neighbors in Word and deed."

Schumann is traveling with an IELCHI assessment team to communities served by Chilean Lutheran pastors, including in Santiago, Vina del Mar, Valparaiso, and Quilpue. The IELCHI president said the church plans to focus on “small localities that have, comparably, suffered much more than the large cities and which have been forgotten and overlooked by the TV cameras.”

The LCMS partner church plans to provide for immediate urgent and basic needs, both material and spiritual, and also assist with long-term rebuilding efforts.

Plans are in the works for Rev. Dr. Jorge Groh, regional director for LCMS World Mission in Latin America and the Caribbean, to visit Chile March 12 as LCMS President Gerald Kieschnick's representative to the Chilean Lutheran church to help evaluate the opportunities for post-disaster ministry and to encourage the leaders and members of the IELCHI. LCMS World Relief and Human Care tentatively is planning to send a two or three-person team to Chile under the direction of Rev. Glenn F. Merritt, director of Disaster Response.

The LCMS partner church is small, including five pastors, 200 members, three missions, and two schools with 900 students.

On behalf of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, LCMS World Relief and Human Care (the mercy arm of the LCMS) is working cooperatively with LCMS World Mission (the mission sending arm of the LCMS), LCMS congregations and districts, and U.S. and international partners to provide immediate and long-term relief for the people of Chile and Confessional Lutheran Church of Chile (IELCHI). Learn more about the LCMS' partner/sister church, the IELCHI, on their Web site at www.ielchi.cl.

Chile Earthquake: Is Mother Nature Out of Control? and Lent

Worldwide Earthquakes from Past 7 Days (USGS)

Livescience.Com ran an article called, "Chile Earthquake: Is Mother Nature Out of Control?" that has been picked up by several other media sources. The USGS estimates there are over 1 million earthquakes a year, most of which we do not feel. The article below states that some scientists do believe that there is an increase in the number of earthquakes over the past 15 years. Of course, several large earthquakes in the span of a few weeks makes people become aware of earthquakes.

When the Lord's disciples asked him when he would return, Jesus said there would be, "earthquakes in various places" (Matthew 24:7) but "these are the beginning of the birth pains." (Matthew 24:8)

When we heard the sound of the earthquake in Jimini back in January 2010, several described it as the sound of fright train. I thought it sounded like a howl. It reminded me of Romans 8:22, "For we know that ​the whole creation t​has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now."

Whether Christ's return is today, tomorrow, or a thousand years from now, the earthquakes as he said should remind us of his return. In the season of Lent, these signs of his return should cause us to repent. This is not a point your finger at someone else telling them to repent, but you and me should repent of our own sins and then seek comfort in the forgiveness found in the cross of Jesus.

--
Original Article:

Chile Earthquake: Is Mother Nature Out of Control?

By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor

posted: 27 February 2010 12:35 pm ET

Chile is on a hotspot of sorts for earthquake activity. And so the 8.8-magnitude temblor that shook the region overnight was not a surprise, historically speaking. Nor was it outside the realm of normal, scientists say, even though it comes on the heels of other major earthquakes.

One scientist, however, says that relative to the time period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, Earth has been more active over the past 15 years or so. 

The Chilean earthquake, and the tsunami it spawned, originated on a hot spot known as a subduction zone, where one plate of Earth's crust dives under another. It's part of the active "Ring of Fire," a zone of major crustal plate clashes that surround the Pacific Ocean.

"This particular subduction zone has produced very damaging earthquakes throughout its history," said Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The largest quake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5, occurred along the same fault zone in May 1960.

Even so, magnitude-8 earthquakes occur globally, on average, just once a year. Since magnitudes are given on a logarithmic scale, an 8.8-magnitude is much more intense than a magnitude 8, and so this event would be even rarer, said J. Ramón Arrowsmith, a geologist at Arizona State University.

Is Earth shaking more?
The Ryukyu Islands of Japan were hit with a 7.0-magnitude quake on Friday night. News of that tremor, the Haiti quake and now Chile may make it seem as if Earth is becoming ever more active. But in the grand scheme of things, geologists say this is just Mother Nature as usual.

"From our human perspective with our relatively short and incomplete memories and better and better communications around the world, we hear about more earthquakes and it seems like they are more frequent," Arrowsmith said. "But this is probably not any indication of a global change in earthquake rate of significance."

Coupled with better communication, as the human population skyrockets and we move into more hazardous regions, we're going to hear more about the events that do occur, Arrowsmith added.

However, "relative to the 20-year period from the mid-1970s to the mid 1990s, the Earth has been more active over the past 15 or so years," said Stephen S. Gao, a geophysicist at Missouri University of Science and Technology. "We still do not know the reason for this yet. Could simply be the natural temporal variation of the stress field in the earth's lithosphere." (The lithosphere is the outer solid part of the Earth.)

While the Chilean earthquake wasn't directly related to Japan's 7.0-magnitude temblor, the two have some factors in common.

For one, any seismic waves that made their way from Japan to the Chilean coast could play a slight role in ground-shaking.

"It is too far away for any direct triggering, and those distances also make the seismic waves as they would pass by from the Haiti or Japan events pretty small because of attenuation," Arrowsmith told LiveScience. (Attenuation is the decrease in energy with distance.) "Nevertheless, if the Chilean fault surface were close to failure, those small waves could push it even closer."

In addition, both regions reside within the Ring of Fire, which is a zone surrounding the Pacific Ocean where the Pacific tectonic plate and other plates dive beneath other slabs of Earth. About 90 percent of the world's earthquakes occur along this arc. (The next most seismic region, where just 5 to 6 percent of temblors occur, is the Alpide belt, which extends from the Mediterranean region eastward.)

Colliding platesThe Chilean earthquake occurred at the boundary between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates. These rocky slabs are converging at a rate of 3 inches (80 mm) per year, according to the USGS. This huge jolt happened as the Nazca plate moved down and landward below the South American plate. This is called a subduction zone when one plate subducts beneath another.

(Over time, the overriding South American Plate gets lifted up, creating the towering Andes Mountains.)

The plate movement explains why coastal Chile has such a history of powerful earthquakes . Since 1973, 13 temblors of magnitude 7.0 or greater have occurred there, according to the USGS.

In fact, the Chile earthquake originated about 140 miles (230 kilometers) north of the source region of the magnitude 9.5 earthquake of May 1960, considered the largest instrumentally recorded earthquake in the world. The 1960 earthquake killed 1,655 people in southern Chile, unleashing atsunami that crossed the Pacific and killed 61 people in Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.

In November 1922, a magnitude-8.5 earthquake occurred about 540 miles (870 kilometers) to the north of Saturday's earthquake, triggering a local tsunami that inundated the Chile coast and crossed the Pacific to Hawaii.

Because Saturday's earthquake was so huge, the amount of shaking experienced in Chile would likely have caused just as much damage had a similar-sized event occurred elsewhere, said Baldwin, the USGS scientist.

"If [the quake] were in Los Angeles you'd probably have massive destruction too," Baldwin said in a telephone interview.

© 2010 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Earthquake in Chile

From USGS (Click for Larger View)

Woke up this morning to hear that an 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit Chile. So far a much lower death toll reported than when the earthquake hit in Haiti. The 8.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Santiago, Chile is 512 times more powerful than the magnitude 7 earthquake that hit Haiti. Yet fortunately Santiago, Chile is not as densely populated as Port au Prince, Haiti, and it seems as if the buildings are better able to withstand earthquakes. We wait and see what comes next. Apparently Tsunami warnings also. No doubt Revs. Glenn Merritt and Carlos Hernandez are on this and will be watching to see if it is possible and needed for LCMS World Relief and Human Care to respond. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Republic of Chile is a partner with the Missouri Synod.

Click for Summary from the USGS.

Issues, Etc. Interview One Month after Haiti Earthquake

Issues, Etc. Interviewed me today about the relief efforts in Haiti. You can listen to the interview below.

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Team Debriefing, Update, and Reflections

Pictured (in no particular order): Rev. Matthew Harrison (WR-HC), Rev. Glenn Merritt (WR-HC), Rev. Dr. Albert Collver, Danelle Putnam (WM), Rev. Ted Krey (WM), Rev. Dr. Jorge Groh (WM), Olga Groh (WM), James Neundorf (WM), Sherie Auger (WM Caymen Islands), Rev. Ed Auger (WM Caymen Islands), Rev. Walter Ries Jr (Missionary from Brazil), Kisayrio Gebhart (WM Administrative Support), Rev. Carlos Hernandez (WR-HC), Jacob Fiene (WR-HC), Rev. Steve Lee (LCMS Pastor), Matthew Schlanger (WR-HC), and probably a few other people I forgot.

Today, from 9:00 a.m. until just after noon, the "team," minus the LCMS WR-HC Medical Medical Team (which returned yesterday), met to debrief and discuss the best way to pool resources to move forward to provide relief to the people in Haiti. The meeting was productive and offered time for the team to reflect and debrief on their experiences over the past few days. One thing that became apparent was that there were two distinct sets of experiences--the experiences of those who went into Haiti, to Port-au-Prince and Jacmel; and the experiences of those who stayed behind in Jimani at the Good Samaritan Hospital.

In summary, those who went into Haiti saw mass destruction of buildings and property, as well as evidence of the loss of human life. (Many bodies are still left buried in in the rubble, etc.) The destruction was great. However, apart from a few encounters with people on the ground, they were dealing mostly with assessing the situation, observing the conditions of the roads and buildings, and formulating logistically how further aid could be provided. They also noted that there were three basic needs: medical, food and nutritional, and spiritual and pastoral care.

On the other hand, those who remained behind at Jimani had a different experience altogether. There was the activity of the hospital and critical patients being flown in and out. Perhaps the most defining moment of their experience was the occurrence of two earthquakes/tremors that shook the compound. The first earthquake/tremor happened late afternoon/early evening just before dinner. In fact, I was sitting on the roof fiddling with "technology" to get an Internet connection for my laptop when the first quake/tremor hit. One thing I knew for certain was that I wasn't going to remain on the roof, and I quickly made my way down the stairs to terra firma. After that, I returned to the house where the doctors, volunteers, and caregivers were staying to relax some and reflect on what had just occurred. Mere moments after I "settled in," a nurse came running into the house saying, "We need a pastor! We need a pastor!" Carlos Hernandez and I responded and followed her to the hospital grounds. Meanwhile, Rev. Ted Krey and Rev. Walter Ryes (Ries) were at a different part of the hospital grounds, near the orphanage trying to assist there. The earthquake/tremor/aftershock caused the patients to relive what had occurred days earlier. Some were trying to flee, others were tearing their bandages off, and at least one jumped off a second story balcony, fracturing his pelvis. Once the situation settled a bit, it was time to help distribute the meals to the patients (and their families) for the evening. One Haitian climbed up to a high place and started shouting that the end of the world was near, etc. The situation over all was rather chaotic.

The second tremor occurred after many of the relief workers had fallen asleep and indeed felt stronger than the first one. The second tremor seemed to affect the doctors, nurses, and caregivers more than it affected the Haitians. One of the doctors panicked and tried to jump off the second story balcony. (Fortunately, he was persuaded to come down the stairs quickly instead.) A large number of the caregivers (including yours truly) slept outside that night.

The point being: the team that remained in Jimani was much more involved in the care to patients and caregivers alike than the assessment team that went into Haiti. Because the Lutheran pastors wore clerical collars, the Haitians, who are predominately Roman Catholic, took comfort knowing that a "priest" was praying for them--even if, the "priest" couldn't speak their language. The other protestant ministers (e.g., few Baptists) tended to blend in with the other volunteers and relief workers because they were not readily identifiable as clergy.

These two different sets of experiences were helpful in the team debriefing for the planning of the next stage of relief.

Currently, LCMS World Relief and Human Care is in the planning stages to deploy a Mercy Medical Team (MMT) to Jacmel, Haiti, very soon. Such a team comes at the request of President Kessa. Of course, over the next few days the situation could change, as it is rather fluid, but currently that is the plan. Further plans are being made on how to best provide relief for the next stage. The debriefing experience was good and allowed the team to express gratitude to each other and to look forward to the future.

- abc3+

LCMS World Relief and Human Care responds in Haiti with emergency funds after devastating earthquake

LCMS World Relief and Human Care Responds to the Haitian Earthquake Disaster. From the LCMS WR-HC Website located  here.

01-13: LCMS World Relief and Human Care responds in Haiti with emergency funds after devastating earthquake

As news of what is being called the largest earthquake to hit Haiti in more than 200 years reached LCMS World Relief and Human Care (LCMS WR-HC) on Tuesday, the Synod’s mercy arm began preparing to reach out in the Caribbean nation with much needed assistance and working in cooperation with Lutheran partners.

Only hours after getting reports of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake, the Synod’s mercy arm announced it was making available funds to meet initial emergency needs. "The unfolding drama in Haiti calls for unlimited mercy on the part of the people of the LCMS. The needs are urgent and overwhelming right now," said Glenn F. Merritt, LCMS WR-HC director of Disaster Response. "I appeal to God's people to respond as generously as possible during this most difficult time."

Early reports indicate extensive property damage and terrible suffering among people trapped in collapsed buildings in an impoverished country already challenged by longtime political strife and poverty. Haiti is widely known as the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

News of the devastation triggered numerous calls and e-mails to LCMS Life and Health Ministries Director Maggie Karner who, even before the earthquake, was preparing to send the first LCMS WR-HC Mercy Medical Team (MMT) to Haiti next month. Ironically, on Monday Karner sent a massive MMT recruitment appeal to LCMS pastors and congregations asking for physicians, pharmacists, and other medical professionals to volunteer for the team that is scheduled to serve in Haiti March 11-21.

"Our preliminary legwork for the first MMT team to Haiti in March will serve us well as we prepare to respond," Karner said Tuesday night. "Perhaps now, because of this tragedy, people will see the desperate need in Haiti and prayerfully consider how they can use their gifts and talents." (To learn more about the MMT trip to Haiti, contact LCMS WR-HC’s Jacob Fiene at 800-248-1930, ext. 1278, or jacob.fiene@lcms.org.)

LCMS WR-HC is working cooperatively with LCMS World Mission, Haitian missionaries, and partner churches to provide relief in a timely fashion. Funds are urgently needed to help Haitians who have lost loved ones and homes.

To share Christ’s mercy with suffering Haitians, make a gift by clicking the Give Now button below.

	to Haiti Earthquake Relief