Nozomi Project

What is art in relation to the church? A painting on a wall? Special music during worship? An evangelistic event? Yes, but art is so much more! It is a language, indeed a very powerful language for connecting us to the world, to each other, and to God.

Nozomi Project is an outstanding story of art enabling people to wrestle with the world in the aftermath of the tsunami, connect with others in spite of hardship, and draw near to God as the Wonderful Counselor.

A broken world

On March 11, 2011 the world changed. It became a black and white world, like the old photographs found amidst the debris. Gray mud from the ocean floor covered and stained everything, while white masks protected our lungs from the resulting dust that blew through the air. Even the sun itself hid behind the dull clouds of winter, refusing to penetrate the gray abyss.

The world became two-dimensional and vacant. Buildings, power lines, and trees lay flattened or washed away, leaving nothing but empty concrete foundations and amorphous piles of debris.

The world became hard and inhuman. Robot-like survival instincts took over to meet basic needs of food and shelter. Roads were cleared in the hope that more help would come. Food distribution felt like prison lines absent of smiles, conversation or laughter. Waiting became the new normal.

Nozomi artisan and manager, Yuko Sasaki recalled, “We couldn’t laugh. We didn’t know what we were living for day after day. We ate without tasting the food. There was no thought for the future, even a year after the earthquake.”

Connecting to the world

How could people relate to this new world? At Nozomi, the women literally “picked up the pieces” of their lives to rebuild through making jewelry. Something symbolically powerful pervaded the act of collecting wave-washed broken pottery, cleaning it, and transforming it into something of value and beauty.

Yuri, another Nozomi artisan, was with her three-year-old son when the earthquake struck. Bearing the responsibility to guide all of the senior citizens where she worked to a safer place, Yuri asked a friend to watch her son, but the boy drowned in the tsunami. Afterwards, guilt and despair tore Yuri apart. “Now at Nozomi I am making key chains named after my son Kosei. I am glad that his name will be remembered this way . . . I didn’t know that creating something could bring so much healing.”

“Matsuri” Yuko, Internet sales manager for Nozomi, lost her mother and seven-months-pregnant older sister in the tsunami. After the earthquake, she was separated from her husband, lived with her father who did not want her in the house, and had no money. “I was at a loss. I just wanted to die, but I knew I couldn’t leave my children . . . But now, it’s amazing. It’s mysterious to me how this place soothed my heart.”

Nozomi is helping the women reconnect and find a place to belong amidst the devastation. “It became a home for our heart,” said Yuko.

Connecting to each other

Broken shards redeemed as valuable, sought-after pieces of jewelry served as a powerful symbol, but not only a symbol. “God was working in multiple layers in our midst that we couldn’t have thought of ourselves,” said Sue Takamoto, founder of Nozomi Project. The jewelry also embodied the DNA of gospel-based healing community.

“I thought to make jewelry you had to do the whole process yourself,” Yuko said. “But one person cleans the pieces, one person grinds the pottery, one person weaves the bands . . . everybody is involved. I was really surprised by this at first. Women new to Nozomi hesitate to join us because they don’t know how to make jewelry, but we can always find a job for them to do. We tell them, ‘Just come and see!’”

Women started working at Nozomi as a way to help others, but in the process ended up helping themselves. “In the beginning,” Yuko remembered, “I thought I had to keep going all by myself. But when I was about to break down, people were there to support me and pull me back up. Oh, I thought, this is what community is for . . . Because we experienced this pain together, we were able to be there for one another and encourage one another. Perhaps that is part of the strength of Nozomi.”

Connecting to God

Jewelry became a way to gainfully employ women in a region sorely in need of jobs and economic development. At the same time, it has also become a powerful tool for communicating the gospel.

Most days after lunch, the women gather for a time of reading the Bible together, discussion, and prayer. “One time I went to the library with my big Bible, and I sat there and read.” said “Matsuri” Yuko. “I didn’t understand a thing! So, I think it’s definitely easier to understand when we’re together and able to share.” In July, she was baptized in the same ocean that had taken her mother, sister, and nephew just two years before. Recently, several other women have prayed to trust Jesus and are studying the Bible.

Chad Huddleston, one of the leaders of the Be One house church network overseeing Nozomi Project, shared “God will send hope around the world through our brokenness and through the beauty he creates out of our brokenness.” Sue later remarked, “That just really crystallized to me the hope of what we’re trying to do.”

What is the gospel? We are broken but have been redeemed by the One who found us. We were dead but have been made alive. We were a people “without nozomi (hope)” (Ephesians 2:12), but are now a people with hope. In the gospel, we find the unraveled woven together and wholeness out of brokenness. Nozomi Project is boldly proclaiming and living out these truths one piece of jewelry at a time.

You can learn more about Nozomi Project and order their jewelry online at www.nozomiproject.com.