Greetings from Salt Lake City!

I've been here for a little over a week now and boy does time fly. So many things have happened during the past week, I'm still trying to digest it all. We had a wedding reception here in Salt Lake City. What a great time. From my side, the only person, family or friend that was able to come was my father. It was so nice to have him there though. Hopefully we'll be able to have a reception in Massachusetts some time soon so that people from the east coast will be able to attend. Yoshikimi, my brother in law, was accepted to STF. He also wowed us all with his solo piano concert. We also had a 3 day workshop for the BC's here in Utah up in the mountains in Park City. That was a great time as well.

We've been packing all day, and tomorrow morning Terumi and I will be heading out of Utah for Massachusetts where we're getting an apartment together and finally starting our married life. Exciting times to come. We're driving cross country in her Corolla that we've completely stuffed with all of her stuff (half of it being clothes@@!!). Here are a couple pictures from the past week. I think the images come out more clear if you click on them.

At the reception. The most beautiful bride ever.

 

 

 

The 3 day workshop. Michelle, Terumi, Yoshikimi, Kug Sun, Fiona, myself and David.

 

Have a wonderful week everyone. God Bless@!

Currently Listening Free By Libera see related

- When A Knight

I hope everyone's new year has come to a great start and we're all starting on a good foot because of last year.  I realized as the year 2006 came around, the December 04' blessed couples have the status of being blessed in 3 different years already even though we've been blessed for little over a year.

Yesterday was Pappa's birthday and we celebrated it in the evening as a family over a delicious shrimp dinner prepared by my wonderful mother. Over the past few years, I've come to realize how beautiful a couple my parents are and my respect for them continually grows day by day.  Happy Birthday Pappa.

I'm really looking forward to this year. Tomorrow I will be starting my first full time semester in college. Terumi will be graduating in the spring and will move out to the north east to go to graduate school in the fall. Discussions are going on now about going to Cheong Pyeong this summer to help organize the 2nd gen. workshop. We're also discussing having a wedding ceremony and reception in Salt Lake City this summer.

Right now I'm working 3 part time jobs. The first is at KAHR Arms where I do odd jobs delivering machine parts and assemble and clean guns. The next is an accounting/sales job at Clearwater beverages, which is owned by a church memeber here in Worcester. They do private labeling for restaurants and businesses. If you ever want your own beverage, for example (Billy's old fashioned cream soda) for your organization or company, you know who to call. The third job is at Express clothing stores. I'm actually really enjoying that job because it's been an unexpected, most pleasant experience helping customers. Because of the season, I've only been able to work a few hours at each job every week which is nowhere near what I need, but it will have to do for now.

Today is another special day. It's Terumi's birthday! (It's also Josh Thompson and Ingrid Duffy's birthday. Happy birthday guys..)

Happy Birthday to the greatest wife in the cosmos.

Here are a few pictures from last year (I believe you can click on them to enlarge them):

Terumi Visits Boston!

Breakfast at Finnagle A Bagel

Brown-Shirt-Eat-Ice-Cream Day

May:

Sunflower aapron

Yoshikimi (my awsome brother-in-law) and Terumi

Terumi and Yoshika (my cool sister-in-law)

A Visit to Salt Lake City

Ice cold boba on a hot summer afternoon

Can't let any go to waste!

At the Mormon Temple

Out to lunch with Yoshika and a friend

I like these two pictures because I think we both look like rodents.

Having dinner at home

Perfect asian tourist brochure picture. Visiting a copper mine. The hole in the ground is so large you can see it from outer space. I think it's the only man-made object besides the great wall and the three gorges dams.

Lunch at a chinese restaurant

Eyes on the road!

Bowling (of course I could only do that with the lightest ball)

Looking over the city lights.

Be serious...

Japan:

Terumi engaged in an intense game of mahjong on the plane

In front of our Grandparents' house

My grandfather and grand mother on either sides, my uncle on the top left and my aunt on the top right with her husband top middle.

In Kyoto at kinkakuji (Golden Temple)

At another temple in Kyoto

Oh so elegant...

Korea:

Odeng at the shijang! Eat that....

Meeting up with Chris (taking the picture), Miyoung, Jesse, Kiantar, Moonja and Tateo In Seoul

Cheong Pyeong:

With Jin and Joy

Band of brothers

With the amazing Dave and Meadow in front of the ansoo hall

Korean glamour shots!

Back At Home

Doing a prayer vigil for Shin Gil Nim with some college students. Josh Perry, Ju Yup Jung and Eika Kuwahara. Ju Yup is Eika's husband and he came to visit the US for a couple weeks.

I'll end with one more picture of Terumi. =P

Once again, Happy Birthday Terumi and I wish blessing and success in all that you do. God Bless.

Have a wonderful January everyone!

"We are all brothers and sisters. Furthermore, the purpose of our life on earth is not to amass material goods. We are alive in this world so that we can develop and perfect our eternal spirit. The only way to do this is through the practice of true love..."

-Rev. Sun Myung Moon

I’m still trying to figure out if this greatest week of my life really happened.. The state of Massachusetts was blessed with the presence of the most beautiful daughter of God for a week. A week well spent filled with joy and laughter, getting to know family and friends and of course each other. We were able to have lunch with OUR grandpa and aunt. We even drove out to Albany to bless one of our great aunts. My wonderful wife, Terumi Hisano Okano:

Now she’s back at home in Utah and I’m still trying to adjust to her not being here. I will be visiting Utah this summer to get to know my new family better. Can’t wait!

On another note, I’m still trying to figure out what God wants me to do next semester. This semester I’m just taking classes part time at a local community college and working for the church full time. At this rate however, it will take me 10 years to get my Bachelors.. hmm…Terumi is in her Junior year of university so she’ll be graduating about three years before me. Each blessing situation is so unique and each has cosmic potential to be a testimony to the greatness of God and our True Parents. It’s just up to us to make the decision within ourselves to create it. I really feel that this decision should be deeply rooted in your heart before you find out who the person or potential person is. It’s something sacred that’s between your heart and God’s that serves as the bedrock for your future thoughts, decisions and actions.

Here's an attempt to share this amazing week with you.

Dinner with the family

At Bugaboo Creek

Lunch with Grandpa

60 years from now!

A romanitc lunch..... Actually, we just went and sat down at that table, took the picture, and left..=)

Taste testing our freshly made banana cream pie

Eating at Upper Crust right after getting her haircut

We went to a restaurant called "Masao's Kitchen".. Macrobiotic and Vegan cuisine... YummY!~

In front of Boston's Old City Hall

Visiting and blessing our Great Aunt Theresa

Trying on sunglasses at an outlet mall

IcE CrEaM!~

Tamami doing Terumi's nails

Our first cake-cutting at a small byebye party

We stopped to take a picture on our seaside drive back to Boston

Packing on the last day... Oh man that's a lot of stuff!

What to do!!? I know, I'll call my husband he'll know what to do!

Just as I thought!

A visit to Morning Garden, Father's property in Gloucester.

Please check out my wife Terumi's xanga for more pictures! www.xanga.com/terubozu

So much has happened in the last few months it's hard to think of where to start. I came returned from Korea in August just in time for the STF graduation, graduated, and then went home. I was at home for the next half year going to school part time at Quinsigamond community college and working part time as a security guard at Saeilo and KAHR arms. At the time my parents and I did a condition to prepare for the matching. Once we finished the condition, neither did my parents nor I feel a strong push for me to get matched at the time, so we just set that aside for the time being.

Then.....The big announcement came out that True Parents would be doing a matching in New York. My parents wanted to speak to my brother Yoshio and I that evening and I had no idea what I was going to say to them. We carefully read over the whole paper together and then my parents were kind of like "well....??" There was a long silence and it was actually my younger brother that spoke up first and said "I want to do whatever your wish is Pappa and Mommy"  <~~ that's how I looked inside once he said that... "What's going on here?" I thought. "I'm supposed to be the one setting the example for my younger siblings and here is my brother giving me the biggest division of my life!" It was at that moment that I realized that I wasn't thinking of the blessing in terms of being something that was for the sake of others, but instead only thinking of it as something for myself. Many times we say to ourselves that we want to fully understand the meaning and value of the blessing before we get blessed. I'm not saying to blindly jump into the blessing because it absolutely takes a certain understanding and maturity in going, but at the same time tell me who, before being blessed, knows the joy and magnificence of having their first child or seeing your children grow up and become even greater people than yourself. Or the happiness you feel when your own children are blessed and they have children. Who knows the comfort and assurance that comes with knowing that you and someone else are committed to a dream and will work together no matter what to fulfill it. Who knows the feeling of the moment you make that eternal promise directly to Heaven that you will fulfill God's dream through your two families coming together. None of these things can be understood without actually experiencing them but each one and so many more things that can only be experienced are crucial parts in understanding the meaning and value of the blessing. Which is why for me personally the beauty of going to the blessing wasn't so much my personal understanding of the blessing, but the beauty lies in the purpose, commitment, and unity of heart that our two families, one with God's heart went into it with.

Back to the story.. So after my brother gave his answer.. I sat there quietly for a minute and then finally asked if we could do a prayer. It was during that prayer that I felt the green light from God to go to the matching. As I opened my eyes at the end of the prayer, I felt completely at peace with the decision to go. I absolutely feel that it was the unity that my family made at that time which allowed my brother and I to go and receive the blessing.

As I sat in the big room at East Garden and Father was walking around matching couples I felt completely at peace. There was no nervousness because my family and I had made a clear decision with God...and there in that room I was sitting in His lap.

I actually had a clear vision as I was sitting in the room that my wife was going to be Japanese, but that's another story. It was about 30 seconds after that that True Father pointed at me and then pointed to someone somewhere behind me. It took a few seconds for the person to finally get up (later I found out that she didn't know who True Father was pointing to) but finally after Peter Kim said green!!?(which is the color shirt she was wearing) she stood up. As soon as I heard Peter Kim say green, before turning around, green became my secret favorite color.. shhh! I was planning on ever so smoothly standing up and saying thank you to True Parents in Korean because I had just been there for almost a year, but when He called me, I was a mess, I just stood up and started walking away from him. Peter Kim grabbed me and pushed my head down and made me bow and was like "say thank you!!" I was like DoH!!>

After that we went to get our ring sizes and spent the next few days all together with the other blessed couples having the most incredible experiences receiving guidance from True Father every day and lectures from Rev. Schanker. Later that week was the blessing ceremony and after the ceremony our two families got together at a diner for lunch. Her whole family flew all the way from Utah.

And now I'm blessed to the most incredible sister Terumi Hisano Okano. She is currently in her junior year at the University of Utah working on her chemical engineering degree. About a month and a half ago I moved into Boston church to work full time for the church for the semester. I'm also taking 2 classes at Bunker Hill Community College (the school where Goodwill Hunting was filmed!!) In about a week and a half Terumi will be coming to Boston to visit and meet family and friends during our spring break, and I will be going out there this summer to do the same. She loves country music and now so do I. As a matter of fact, I'm wearing headphones right now listening to Alan Jackson. I really respect this sister so much for her faith and determination to bring joy to God, True Parents, and to our family and friends. We're constantly learning from each other and have consistently been doing conditions together non-stop since we've been blessed.

"The boundary line between Heaven and Hell is a matter of heart" -SMM 12/24/04, East Garden, NY

IMON

               Masao

Here are a few pictures I wanted to share:

Yoshio and Anthea, Terumi and I and family.

Terumi and I outside after the Blessing Ceremony

Terumi and I with Stephen and Mari's couple

At the diner

At Rockefeller Center

Terumi and my wonderful little sister Tamami

My younger sister Motoe and I at home

Yoshio and Tamami at the dinner table

God Bless!

Haha, i forgot where the "New Weblog Entry" button was...

So it looks like the next year in my life is going to look a lot different from the outside than i expexted. I've finally decided not to stay in Korea for another year and settle down at home for a bit. A definite plan for the fall hasn't beeen decided yet, but things should fall into place within the next month or so. I'll be arriving back in Boston on July 24th.. Then most likely heading off to the Jr. STF/Graduation workshop about a week after that. I'd like to visit some people prior to the workshop though.. Then most likely i'll be at home for a few days and hang out with my sisters... then i plan to go on a little trip to florida for somie high quality lunker bass fishing with my brother yoshio. We have a lot to catch up on America...

I've been listenning basically strictly to korea ballad music these days.. there are some pretty good artists out there.. I'm studying korean through it.. yupp. which i will be continuing  to do once i get home.. until i'm fluent!

I'm really interested to see what the next chapter of my life looks like. Who i'll meet,  where i'll go, how TALL i will be... but i guess it's all up to me to design it. Being here in Korea has been such a huge blessing and i wouldn't trade the relationships that i've been blessed with here for anything. I feel good about this year, but at the same time i feel like i've failed because when i look in the eyes of the students here, many times i see disrespect, and disliking toward me. What can i do to change this within the next couple weeks?

i've learned to speak fluent konglish through teaching...Teaching english has been fun.. I play games with the kids every class... the teacher is kinda funny.. this is her first year teaching so she gives the lesson in like 20 min.. then out of nowhere (it's even more exciting when it's before the lesson) she says to the class "ok, not masao teacher will play a game with everyone" so i've learned to prepare for each class a game and a lesson.. Also, the other day they recorded my voice for the listenning portion of the midterms for the 5th and 6th graders... Then i was like, "would you like me to help with the other grades too?" and the teachers looked at eachother and were like "Since the kids are young, they won't be able to understand english coming from a native speaker, so we'll do it".....

I feel like when i get back to the US, everyone's gonna be really different, or almost exactly the same...

                                                                                      Masao

"With that standard of true love all five senses will cooperate instead of repelling each other, for they do so out of happiness, not duty."

                                 -Rev. Sun Myung Moon- "Our Standard" 3-1-81