Recap Blog 2: Campus Outreach at Hilo is NOT Campus Outreach at ASU.

First week of campus!  Always exciting and nerve-wracking.  We spent the first week on campus tabling for a club fair, giving away water bottles and candy and asking people to fill out spiritual interest surveys.  At the end of the week we had our outreach at the beach, where Albert taught free surf lessons.

The club fair was definitely the first time I got to see how ministry operated very differently at a small, commuter college like UHH instead of the huge university campus that is ASU.  At ASU, 0 week (the week before classes start) is one of our most important weeks of ministry.  Everyone pitches in on this crazy, hectic week when thousands of students are flooding the campus for the first time.  Every day of 0 week we hand out free snow cones and water bottles at the center of campus while passing out surveys.  Then every night of the week we have a welcome event.  One night we’ll have a huge game of cops and robbers across all of campus, the next night a barbeque, and the next a “Tour de Cru,” where we all bicycle around Tempe together.  Over the course of the week we hand out hundreds of freshman survival kits, and it’s an intense week for all sixty or more of us on leadership.

This first week on UHH was quite different.  We had our STINT Team of nine people and one staff member to reach the campus of 4,000, and pretty much no budget to speak of.  The club fair that we attended at the campus center plaza was in the main thoroughfare of campus, but only about a dozen clubs were advertising.  We offered a few water bottles, candy, and highlighters to people who would fill out our spiritual interest surveys.  Occasionally people would pick up a water bottle or highlighter, but virtually no one took the candy. 

We ended up getting 200 surveys filled out, which was great since we set a goal of reaching 120 students in the first week.  But more than that, tabling was an opportunity for us to see the student population and what we need to be aware of when doing ministry here.  One of the things I noticed was that there are a lot of toddlers at UHH.  You rarely see students with their children at ASU, but it’s not uncommon here.  You can also tell really quickly that UHH is a commuter campus, because no one really hangs out on campus so UHH is pretty much empty after 2:30.  There’s also a much higher percentage of students from outside the country or from U.S. territories.  We’ve met students from Japan, China, Guam, Micronesia, and American Samoa. 

For us, these aren’t just statistics.  This greatly affects how we reach out to students and how we try to build a sustainable movement for when we leave.  A student who has a tight-knit family community and a part time job while going to school won’t be interested in a midnight game of capture the flag the way a new freshman at ASU would.  We have to adapt our schedules, the events we run, and the way we present material so that we’re actually showing love and care to the students in a way that’s relevant to where they are in life.

Because almost everyone on our team has come from a large, public university, doing culturally relevant ministry at UHH is pretty foreign to us, even though we’re still in the U.S.  We’d all really appreciate your prayers that we would be able to have wisdom in caring for the students at this campus.   Mahalo!

Recap Blog 1: A Very Japanese New Year

So with all the rushing around as we got settled at the beginning of this year, I got a little bit behind on blogging.  I'd like to catch you all up on what's happened in Hilo since I left off, but I'd also like to write it in chunks that are a manageable size to read.  Therefore I've decided to write a blog covering each week that I've been in Hilo, and post one each day for the next week.  Hopefully this will get everybody (including me) caught up and I will keep on top of my blog from now on.

Without further ado, here is the week after Christmas' blog:

I have mentioned before that one reason Cru decided to relocate us to Hilo is that it is a good training spot for Japanese culture because there is a high population of Japanese-Americans here.  We’ve seen this frequently already.  Many of the restaurants nearby offer a menu in Japanese as well as English.  The Inn we stayed at in our first week was located directly above a shop that sold bento, a Japanese-style boxed lunch.  You can actually get bento every day at the UH Hilo cafeteria.

It was fitting that our New Year’s celebration should be Japanese as well.  On New Year’s Eve, we drove to a nearby town that was hosting a Japanese mochi-pounding for the New Year.  It was held at a Buddhist bed and breakfast that was run by a Japanese woman who had moved to Hawaii decades ago.  Mochi is a glutinous rice cake from Japan.  Mochi is made of a special kind of sticky rice, which is steamed, then put into a large pestle.  Two people work the job of pounding the mochi.  One person pounds the rice with a heavy mallet, and the other wets the sticky rice and turns it after each strike with the mallet, to keep the forming mochi consistent throughout.   Eventually the rice is pounded into a uniform, sticky and elastic mass, which is cut into cubes or wrapped around red bean paste.   A more Americanized version of mochi that’s served in Hilo will sometimes have a mini peanut butter cup inside.

Making mochi is a New Year’s Tradition in Japan, and Kylan, Amanda, Katie, Albert and I each got to take a turn hammering the sticky rice that morning.  There were other traditional Japanese arts at the bed and breakfast as well.  Calligraphy and Japanese paintings were for sale.  Taiko drummers performed thunderous pieces on their big drums, playing a piece that imitated the waves crashing against the shores of Okinawa.  Two men performed a traditional Lion-Dog dance, also originating from the island of Okinawa.

Pounding Mochi!

We were all impressed and had a good time, but I think most of all it gave me a chance to connect with the culture I was missing.  It helped me remember Japan, but not in a way that made me homesick for Tokyo.  It gave me encouragement that I could stay connected to Japan, even while living in Hawaii.  Not only that, but it helped connect me to Hawaii’s culture in a way that I could understand.  After New Year’s, I felt a greater connection with Hilo and an increased desire to know and care for the people who live here.

Here’s a picture of me pounding mochi and a picture of the lion-dog.  Hopefully this’ll help you catch a heart for Hawaii and Japan, like it did for me.

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.