We've started!

(Please click on any photo to enlarge.)

FYI, the flight here was no problem, we flew United Airlines' partner, ANA (All Nippon Airways) who served us well. My wife Donna purchased a "newly designed" web pillow. It felt a little weird, but I actually got to sleep on the flight, something I rarely do.

Getting to Ishikawa Prefecture was a bit more of a challenge, there's no direct route from the airport to our eventual destination, but we used a couple of buses and local trains to get to Kanazawa, which is the city right next to Ishikawa.

After a day of settling in, we were sent out to a residence in the Noto area. It may be slightly difficult to see, this is sort of a cross betwen a curb and a ditch. Our guess is the original wall collapsed during the earthquake, but the base of the wall is still there. To rebuild the wall, we need to dig out the dirt, then remove the remaining wall.

Note Peter digging out the dirt while also in his rain jacket.

A jackhammer is used to break down the wall, or what's left of it. Most of the wall that was taken down was accomplished by Adachi-Sensei (Pastor Adachi). He gave Aaron the opportunity to try his hand with the jackhammer. Aaron did a nice job, but handed the task back to Adachi-Sensei.

There were some areas where it was better to take a sledge hammer to knock down part of the wall. Once again, it was Aaron who took on the heavy lifting.

It may be a bit hard to tell, but we managed to take down about half of the wall. We then need to remove the debris of broken concrete and place the debris in reinforced bags to be later hauled away. I'm guessing each bag is at least 40 - 50 pounds when filled.

This is just part of the bags now filled with concrete debris. I'm guessing we removed 800 pounds of debris in one day.

We were hoping to get a little more done, but we had to get back to Ishikawa sooner than later. Note that all of our shoes were immersed in mud as we started during some steady rain which dissipated later in the afternoon.

My hats off to the team -- Peter and Aaron, along with Adachi-Sensei and a young man from Hong Kong named Choi -- who did some major physical labor.

We don't know if we'll be returning to this site tomorrow to finish the job, but whatever happens we hope we've been a blessing wherever we go. As for me, I'm looking for some Advil. Your prayers make a difference! Please stay tuned.