Aloha!

This week was the first time in my life when I have boarded an airplane in Phoenix feeling cold, and landed feeling the need to take off my jacket because it was so warm outside.  I guess this is what it means to live in the tropics.  Hilo is on the Big Island of Hawaii, so it’s not exactly what most people picture when they think of Hawaii.  The weather is certainly warm year round —the temperature ranges from about 65-80 degrees Fahrenheit all year round—but it is also wet.  Extremely wet, especially for an Arizonan.  Weather has been a big adjustment for me.  Phoenix, one of the driest cities in the U.S., averages about 8 inches of rain a year.  Hilo is the rainiest city in the U.S. by a wide margin, averaging 128 inches of rain per year.  It’s rained multiple times every day since we have arrived, often coming down in sheets suddenly and pouring.  I celebrated a little today when I woke up, as I could finally see the blue sky with the sun shining through.  My teammates and I stared out the window as we ate our breakfast, savoring the bright sky while we could as the clouds rolled up from the sea and covered us again.

It’s been a hectic week with a lot of adjustments.  In addition to the rain, this week I transitioned out of my walking cast into an ankle brace.  (I was in car accident about a month ago and badly sprained my ankle).  This meant I spent a lot of time focusing on walking correctly.  If I retrained my ankle by walking with a limp, it could mess up the muscles in my hip and my back.  I can walk around at a moderate pace now, but the beginning of the week was slow.  Thankfully my team has been gracious not only in helping me by wheeling me and my luggage through several airports, but by also slowing their pace so I wouldn’t be alone.

We also made another move.  We spent the first week at the Pakalana Inn in downtown, owned by a friend of the UH Hilo Staff.  But Christmas is the tourist season in Hawaii, so there was no room at the inn for us this Christmas.  The CCC Staff who works at Hilo are back in the mainland (aka the contiguous U.S.) to visit family for Christmas, so we are staying at their house for the next few days.  Please pray that we will soon get our rental applications approved and we can move in somewhere within the next week.  We are also trying to find some used cars that we can resell at the end of our STINT so we can get around town more easily.  Please pray that we can find cars that are low-priced and mechanically sound.  Car buying has been difficult as many cars sell quickly here and we don’t have a vehicle to visit used car lots or individual sellers.

While everything around me is still changing quickly and it’s hard for me to not feel settled, I am looking forward to the growth that a change of environment and culture can bring.  It would have been much harder to come to a place where I could prize blue sky in Arizona.  And I certainly would have never gotten to experience apple-banana harvesting at home.  These examples are small, of course, but they’re valuable to embrace and remember when I hear the rains sweeping in again or when I am in the midst of struggles that I cannot see the end of.  Most of all I am hoping most of all that this change will bring me through circumstances where I come to know and love God in a way that would have been impossible if I had stayed at home.  We will see what this redirection and adventure has for all of us in the not-too-distant future.

I wish you all Merry Christmas, wherever you may be.  Shoot me an email or a text if you have time—I’m always happy to hear from home.



Our 1st Team Picture in Hawaii at the Airport--minus Kimiyo



Tokyo Visas Denied--Heading to Hawaii

It’s been 4 months since my last blog post (Here) and a lot has happened since then.  I waited to blog for so long because my original blog was supposed to be about my time doing ministry in Tokyo, and I wanted my first post to be “WE’RE HERE!”  However, as many of you now know, that is not going to happen.   Long story short, after 4 months of waiting, the government has denied my whole team’s requests for visas, and Cru has reassigned us to Hilo, Hawaii to work at the UH campus there until the end of the year. 

Long story long is as follows:

Back in August, we got our applications for our Certificates of Eligibility turned in to the Tokyo Immigration Bureau on August 15^th.  A certificate of eligibility is a form the Japanese Government grants that shows that you are eligible to live and work in Japan for 1-3 years.  This document allows you to get a visa.  The specific CoEs that we applied for were religious activities CoEs, which required us to send in a resume, a letter of recommendation from a pastor, and several other forms to demonstrate that we were qualified to do the work.  The Japanese Bureau of Immigration website says it takes 1-3 months to process applications for CoEs, but in the last six years that CCC has sent students, it has taken an average of 4-6 weeks, and has never taken more than 2 months.

During September and the first part of October, my team spent a lot of time making sure we were absolutely set to go to Japan on a moment’s notice.  I bought winter jackets and a new suitcase, packed up most of my clothes in vacuum-sealed travel bags, and began the process of saying goodbye to friends and family.  8 weeks passed and our staff in Japan contacted the government, who informed us that everything was backed up because of the tsunami, and that we would just have to be patient.

We continued to be hopeful and prepare.  I studied Japanese at home and tutored my teammate Amanda in the language when we got together.  I stayed involved with my community at Arizona State University, going to the Cru meetings there.

After the 3 months passed, our staff began calling Japanese Immigration every day, and they were continually put on hold and not given any answer.  After two weeks of this our leadership decided that the door to Tokyo was closed and that if we did not receive our CoEs by this past Tuesday, they were going to relocate us to Hawaii.  On Tuesday we finally reached the Japanese government, who told us that their decision was in the mail.  This Friday we learned that the Japanese government has denied our Certificates of Eligibility.

In the last 6 years that Cru has sent STINT teams to Tokyo, we have never had a STINTer have his or her CoE denied.  The denial came as a surprise and disappointment not only to us, but to our leadership and to the staff in Japan who had been awaiting our arrival.  We have learned that in the last year there have been some changes made to immigration laws that we were not aware of when we applied this year.  Our staff will be talking to the Japanese government in the next couple weeks to determine why exactly our CoEs were denied and what we can do next year to prevent this from happening to future STINTers.

Although this news saddens us, we want to use the rest of our STINT year to share Jesus with university students, and we want to gain the experience of doing this in a culture different from our own.  In order to prevent us from using more time waiting for a visa process, Cru has decided to relocate us within the U.S. to Hilo, Hawaii.  The UH campus at Hilo has a high population of Japanese students, and the Cru movement there is just getting started, so having a STINT team there to help build the ministry will be a real blessing to the Cru Staff at the campus.  I have already spoken to some of the UH Cru staff on the phone, and they are very excited for us to come.

My team will be leaving for a short briefing in LA on Tuesday, and then we will fly out to Hilo, HI on Friday.  I look forward to sharing with you all about what The Big Island is like and what God will do there.