Good Morning everyone
Last Wednesday, our immigration lawyer
called me. And she said that my
permanent visa, green card process is now into the final stages. It was good news for Michi
and I…
First I would like to explain our situation
on our visa status.
Since last year August, Michi
and I began the process to obtain a permanent Visa, Green card. Currently, we have a temporary residents visa. It
is good for only 5 years. Now, I
have already been in the
So, Michi and I
had to decide whether to stay in this country or return to
In order to stay in this country, we had
to collect many many documents and send them to the
Immigration department. And last
month, all of our documents were accepted by the department.
The final process to obtain the permanent
visa is to have an interview. But
last week, the lawyer said that we had to collect some additional documents
before the interview. We had to
send our criminal record! Although
we never committed a crime, we had to find and send a record to show we have
committed no crimes. We had to
visit the Japanese council general in
Last Thursday, I had no schedule and I
asked Rev. Bob if we could go to
Because I have had a bad experiences
there…
Some of you may remember that at the end of
January of 2006, I received a parking ticket from the city of
So, I do not have good feelings about
Around 4:30 PM, we left the council
general. It was a rainy
There were 2 cars next to my car. One was a sports car,
the other was a brand new car which had no car license plate yet. When I reached the corner of
I stopped at the car and I said to myself
“oh, no. I am sorry for the car
owner. It may be expensive to fix
this window… especially for such a sports car…” And I started to walk again. When I reached the side of the brand new
car, I found that car also had a broken window on the driver’s side.
Again I said to myself again “oh, no. I am sorry for the owner of this brand
new car. The owner will have to
replace the window, although it was still the brand new.”
And finally, I reached my car. “Oh, my Buddha!”
My car also had it’s
window broken! The broken window
scattered all over inside of my car.
Immediately, I called to Michi and I said “my car has a broken window” She was very surprised
and said “you have what?? You have
a Broken window??” And so I also called the police station…
but they do not take a report for such a minor crime. So, the police officer said please
report your claim on the internet…
I called to Rev. Bob and explained what happened. He tried to find a glass company to fix
my car quickly. And our church
manager Tak Ito, called to the company to make an
appointment. So, I had my window
fix right away… the very next morning.
When I saw the broken window on my car, I
felt sorry for the person who broke my window. That criminal broke those windows for no
purpose. They did not steal money
from my car. So, I could not
understand why they broke all the car windows.
I did not have any feelings of anger at
least not for long. I just felt
that I cannot do anything about it…
Maybe I could try to find the
criminal. But I did not want to… If I wanted to find them, I would need a
lot of angry energy to find them…
It is not good to live with anger and
hate. Even if someone does
something like this…
We know that we should not commit crimes. But sometimes, we are the victims of crime,
although of course we do not want to be.
When someone is a victim of crime, I am sure that the person needs
support and help from others. When I
encountered my broken window, Rev. Bob and Tak really
helped me and made me calm down.
I cannot live by myself. I always have the help and support of
others.
So, when someone has something bad happen
to them, please help them. They
will really appreciate your help and support…
That night, when we were returning to
Gassho