I was 18 years old when I met and joined the HAS-UWC. I had been engaged to a Mormon boy for a year before that, and had broken off the engagement because I felt our marriage would not work and that if we married, I might become insane or something.

There was no logical reason for that. I had a strong intuition that he was not the person whom God intended me to marry. So, I broke off the engagement. If he and I married and he was not the one I was supposed to marry, he would never be happy either. So even though it might be painful to him for me to break off the engagement, in the long run, it was less painful than what would lie ahead otherwise.

After I heard the Principle and joined, as I mentioned before, I really didn't "get it" about men and women relationships. But after time, I began to know intuitively that all the guys living in the center were my brothers, not my boyfriends or potential boyfriends. And that was the end of any searching for romance for me from that time.

I spent time working in the NH church and later was sent to MFT. I was there for a few months but my results were terrible, and I was sent to Ohio to join the state center there. Susan (Finnegan) Fefferman and Christopher Olsen were running the movement there at the time.

I was in that region for several months, and if I remember correctly, David Eaton was just joining or had joined not that long ago in that region. I think Mike Mickler was in that region around that time, too. But am not sure. In my mind, I can see faces of people whom I met around that time, but I don't remember their names.

I was sent to Barrytown and I went through all of the workshops, from 7 days, to 21 days, to 40 days, to 120 days. Then I joined Barrytown staff and worked on fundraising teams. We were merged with the national MFT and I ended up being a fundraiser for a total of 7 years.

Around the end of 1978, I think it was October, maybe it was a little before October, Father announced he was going to hold a matching and blessing. My team captain told our team about the upcoming matching and blessings and explained what the qualifications were to attend.

Well, I didn't expect to attend. Suddenly, my team captain called me aside to talk to me. He told me that I was in a borderline situation as far as qualifying for the matching and blessing.

Women should be 27. I turned 27 in November, a month later than the blessing. He then went on to tell me that I was too much of a Cain and too disunited, so even though he could send me, he would not recommend me. I was rather surprised to hear that.

I felt he was being really arrogant at that point. I always tried to do my best at my mission and I tried to be good. I had no idea what he meant by saying that I was disunited. Anyways, I didn't say anything. I just listened and went on with business and life as usual.

Later, we heard that because certain leaders expressed that it was not plausible to carry out Father's plans in such a short time, Father declared that there was not enough unity and so not enough condition to go ahead.

He was angry because some key leaders couldn't unite with each other and could not trust his direction was coming from God and that God would open the way. The October matching and blessing were canceled.

A few months later, a Japanese IW came to the team. I knew her from before MFT and I respected her a lot. One evening after fundraising, we came home to the center our team was staying at, and the sisters were talking in the bedroom together. Someone brought up about matchings and blessings and some were speculating about what kind of person they would be blessed with.

The IW asked me what kind of person I would like to be matched with. I told her that If I were to be matched, which I doubted, I hoped that God would match me with someone who loved Him more than I did and who had a better standard than I did, so I would be pushed to grow up more.

I didn't care what person was chosen. Whoever God decided was fine with me. I honestly didn't think I would be matched anyways. After that, there weren't any more discussions about matchings, though. We just went on with life and our missions and focused on the moments at hand.

I struggled a lot internally. I wanted to experience a closer relationship with God. But I felt like I had hit some kind of invisible ceiling that I just could not seem to break through. I prayed about it and I felt intuitively it was sin. Maybe something ancestral, maybe something coming from collective responsibility, maybe it was original sin. I didn't know, but I sensed it was there and it was the barrier that blocked the way.

Well, the time came when there was again, the call for going to a matching. This time, I was sent. It was very sudden for everyone. We were gearing up for Mother's Day and the flowers were arriving and we had to just pick up and go to NY. I had this deep desire to go to NY.

I thought that I probably would not be matched, but I just wanted to see True Father and Mother. I expected that when I arrived at the New Yorker and went to the Grand Ballroom with everyone else, Father was going to see me and tell me to get out, that I didn't belong.

I didn't care, though, if I were thrown out. I just wanted to have a glimpse of my parents. I told God about that and that I wish I could meet God there, too, even though I wasn't such a wonderful member, I was usually struggling internally about something or other and I couldn't bring such great external results, either.

First Father began matching black and white couples and he told those sisters who would be willing to marry interracially to go to there and he pointed to an area of the room. I stood up to go and I got hit really hard through my intuition that I was not supposed to be matched with a black person.

I was rather shocked at such a feeling. I told myself that it didn't matter, even if I sat with that group of women, if I were not supposed to be blessed with a black person, Father would not match me with one. He didn't. (It seemed peculiar that I could have such a strong intuition like that. I loved the black members whom I had worked with. My spiritual daughter is black. And I have always felt challenged by the standard of heart and faith I had seen in the black brothers and sisters I had met.)

Next Father began East-West matchings. I thought that if I were to be matched, a person from the orient might be good because the members whom I knew from Japan and Korea were all people with a deep relationship with God and were wonderful examples of faith and attendance in my eyes. I have to say, I feel now, looking back, that I had been protected in some ways. I had never had any negative experiences with anyone from Asia. Not one abuse or bad relationship or bad experience.

Father had called one person to stand up. I was watching and I didn't know the person who was standing there, but I felt this tremendous sense of respect towards this person. I intuited that he had a very good life of faith and practice. I didn't know why I knew that, I just did.

So, here was this person whom I felt such a strong respect for and I was thinking... "that person has a good and high standard" and I was humbled. Father pointed at the sisters and said to stand up. He was calling to me. I thought I misunderstood and he meant the person who was sitting beside me.

It was impossible that he was calling me for that person. Surely he was going to tell ME to get out. But he called to me again and this time it was clear he was talking to me. I stood up obediently and rather surprised.

As soon as I stood up, I felt this huge wave of warm energy rush from the top of my head down to the bottom of my feet, not energy from the side, but from straight above and it rushed down and I felt it in every cell.

And in my mind, I heard God tell me that I had been born for the purpose of being the wife of that person. Father stood us together and he was really happy. He hit my husband hard on the arm and told him that I was too good for him!

We bowed to Father and then turned and went to leave to talk about the matching. On the way out, Mr. Kamiyama punched this person in the stomach lightly and laughed and said something to him in Japanese. They both seemed very happy. I still didn't know who this person was whom I had just been matched with.

We went out and I had long before decided that if God decided to match me through Father, I would just accept whatever God had decided. My match and I talked briefly, then we went and our couple was recorded sometime along the way, I am not sure when or how now, I don't remember that. We returned and we bowed to Mother and to Father, indicating we accepted his matching. It was the day before Mother's Day in 1979.

I learned later more about this person whom I was matched to. He was an MFT commander in New Orleans. And I was a struggling team-member on MFT in a different region. After returning to my mission, I could not "break through" and once more I found myself struggling in my heart because I felt neither my internal nor my external standard were very good but I now am matched with someone whose standard is very high.

I was so ashamed of myself. I wondered how I could ever live up to what God was asking of me. I felt like I was given too great a grace which I did not deserve. That began the 3 year period of engagement. Takayuki tried to offer encouragement and support. He was never arrogant or judgmental and he worked hard to take care of the members in his region.

He didn't believe a person's value is measured by how much money they made or didn't make. He thought the way to get result in his region was not by merely pushing members hard to work and sacrifice, but rather it was to build familial relationships of love, with God at the center. And he encouraged members to develop their personal relationship with God and to read God's words. He did the same with me.

Later, I heard from him that when he was about 4 years old, he had received intuitively that someday he would marry a Westerner. He also had a dream that a day would come when he would leave his home and his mother, and go away to live as the son of another family. He told me that as he was leaving his mother, it was snowing, in his dream.

Several years later, when he was 14, he was adopted by his uncle and aunt who had no children, and the day his mom saw him off was snowing and it was exactly as he had seen in his dream. He had these kinds of intuitive experiences which showed him that his life was being guided by something.

Takayuki came to the US in 1973 with the second group of Japanese who were sent from Japan. He worked on IOWC and helped with the Day of Hope tours. Once, Father took everyone out shopping. Father was picking out scarves for the sisters and ties for the brothers.

He stopped, looked at my husband, and instead of giving him a tie, as he had done with all the other brothers, Father picked up a glass statue of Mary, the mother of Jesus and gave it to him. My husband was rather surprised, especially since he had heard Father speak about the failures Mary made and about her course and how it affected Jesus. Yet here, he was given a glass statue of Mary. This happened in 1973 or 4.

My name is Mary and I come from a religious Catholic family. Neither of us think it was purely a coincidence that Father gave him that statue, which he still has to this day, and later he was matched with me.

Our blessing is not especially easy. We didn't feel we loved each other at first sight. We worked to cultivate our relationship and love has grown. We both value the other as someone God cares about, and we have come to love each other deeply.

We have difficulties and disagreements sometimes, but neither of us expects that the other should make me happy. We use our difficulties to grow together, rather than apart, and to help us to meet God.

We both think that loving and caring for others is what God is asking of us. How much we can donate or how well we can give a sermon or how long we can fast or how hard we can work are secondary to how much we can become people who love.

Yours,

Mary