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.