Geography

You don't realize how important geography is until, well, you look at a map. We heard our first tsunami warning this week over the loudspeakers, and J. dropped what he was doing to come straight back to our hotel, which is on high ground. They had only briefed us on typhoons in our newcomer's brief, so we assumed that if we were in danger, someone would move us to a safer place. Still, we knew our island was only 4-12 miles wide and what we were seeing on TV while everyone in America was sleeping did not look good. We watched all the Japanese stations, but obviously didn't know what they were saying, and the American news was no help because they were already focused on our west coast. The one radio station on the island is in Japanese, and the military station just kept playing their music. We looked out our hotel window at the East China Sea until it was dark, but praised God that we couldn't see any obvious changes to our water from a mile away. We went to bed devastated that you all would wake up to this, and maybe also (greedily?) at peace feeling that we were safe from this terror. 

We live on the Ryukyu Islands - did they even draw our tiny specks? Our island seems REALLY small when compared to the size of mainland Japan. 

Lots of important countries over here. Our military was working hard alongside the Japanese immediately after the tsunami. J's office worked through the nights this weekend to get guys where they needed to be. 

We live just a bit north of Naha, closer to Urasoe, on the East China Sea side. 

From our island of Okinawa, it is:
385 m. to Taipei, Taiwan
514 m. to Shanghai, China
540 m. to Fukuoka, Japan
620 m. to Busan, South Korea
634 m. to Hiroshima, Japan
891 m. to Pyongyang, North Korea
894 m. to Hong Kong
970 m. to Tokyo
1135 m. to Sendai, Japan
and 
6554 miles to San Diego, California




"The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much."  James 5:16