Thank you for your continued prayers and encouragement. We are continuing to respond to the situation as we gain new information. First, here is some of the latest information about the scale of the disaster:

* Over 400,000 people are currently living in shelters
* Death tolls are unofficially over 10,000 people
* 1.5 million homes are without running water

The nuclear situation has not improved as concern is growing that the government may not be able to prevent some type of reactor failure. There has also been a significant amount of misinformation about what a worse case scenario may look like. Our best sources indicate a catastrophic failure would only effect a 30 km perimeter around the nuclear plant. While this would have implications for the immediate area, our staff and church are over 400 km away. That said, this situation is very concerning for those providing relief closer to the reactors and we must continue to monitor this closely.

As we mentioned in our previous email, we sent a scouting team to attempt to make it into the disaster zone. Our group traveled for over 12 hours, struggling to find gas and was then obstructed by snow and poor weather conditions. We eventually decided to abort their trip out of concern that they could be stranded without reaching the affected areas. As you can imagine, this was highly disappointing to our team. We are thankful for the valiant efforts of the scout team and are now exploring others ways of providing immediate and longer term relief.

We do have contacts on the ground who we are able to receive reliable information from. We will be working with these contacts in the next 24-48 hours to determine our specific response to the disaster.

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We will continue to update via Facebook and Twitter

Thank you all for your prayers, generosity and support.