One Love: A Global Family - Reflection and Personal Testimony of the World Peace Tours

.In Sup Moon and his wife, Sun Jin Moon, with his inlaws, Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han.

During this past year, my wife, Sun Jin, and I had the tremendous honor of participating in and accompanying our beloved True Mother in the South American portion of the second world peace tour. Also, during the past recent month, I had the extreme privilege of taking part in the third world peace tour representing three generations of the True Family. Prior to embarking on these tours, I reflected on the significance of these providential events. I asked myself, why is our beloved True Father, who is eighty-eight years old, still directly reaching out to the world? It is difficult enough for most people his age just to stand up. Also, why would our beloved True Mother be willing to sacrifice her life and health, stand on the frontlines with our blessed families, and deliver True Parents’ message of love and peace? After I reflected on the reasons for conducting these tours, the obvious purpose that came to my mind was True Parents’ desire to connect, build, and strengthen our much loved blessed families throughout the world. Second, I believe that through the Universal Peace Federation, True Parents have the urgent wish to restore God’s true love, true life, and true lineage as well as the Blessing beyond our core Unification communities to every level of society. With this basic understanding in mind, I embarked on these world peace tours to support our beloved True Parents.

I believe that one of the main purposes of the world peace tours was to spiritually strengthen our movement and build solidarity among all our brothers and sisters globally. The tours themselves were spiritually, physically, emotionally, and financially challenging, to say the least, for our beloved True Parents as well as all our dear brothers and sisters throughout the world. However, I felt the sincere desire and willingness of every member that I had a blessing to meet during the tours to unite with our True Parents to accomplish every event successfully. I have stated many times in my encounters with brothers and sisters during the course of the tours that the foundation in each nation varies from country to country in terms of the number of membership. However, it is an amazing and astonishing fact that in the span of one lifetime, our True Parents with their blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice as well as the deep conviction, devotion, and faith of our brothers and sisters have created a global movement and more specifically, a global family. We many times take for granted that we have the remarkable blessing of having brothers and sisters and family members in virtually every country of the world. Blessed family members in some countries may feel disheartened at times during their life of faith because they feel isolated or their responsibility seems overwhelming, but we must never forget how far along we are as a family and movement from a global perspective.

I sensed the intense desire of our True Parents to strengthen blessed family members in each country especially during Hoon Dok Hae. Accompanying True Mother on many occasions, I could witness that she would invest wholeheartedly in every country by taking the time each morning to talk directly to our blessed families. Her foremost message was to allow for love to flourish by giving and initiating loving relationships. I could also sense her concern for the future of the movement as she would always put emphasis on requesting CARP members and younger second generation to come forward and offer songs of celebration. She unconditionally taught and nurtured family members with deep concern and love in each country as if each brother and sister were her very own child and a precious child of God. In one poignant moment during breakfast after the event in the Bahamas during the second world peace tour, True Mother, with tears, answered a question from a minister regarding how she felt being anointed as the True Mother. She replied that although feeling unworthy, she made an absolute promise from an early age to God and Heaven to restore the world back to God. With these spiritual "seeds of love" that True Parents have planted, I think True Father and True Mother want all of us to courageously go forth so that we can prosper as a global family of God.

With the Universal Peace Federation, I feel that we are at a crossroads in the history of our movement. Our True Parents and our core blessed families have gone through the difficult task of establishing a Unification tradition centering on True Parents and the Blessing, literally, with their bare hands. With decades of dedication, sacrifice, and creating a foundation of faith, True Parents and the blessed families have and continue to develop a rich Unification tradition that we can really be proud of. In the same manner as St. Paul advancing the words of Jesus to early Gentile Christians, by True Parents establishing the Universal Peace Federation, I believe that True Father is allowing us to advance the core beliefs of our movement which are understanding God’s purpose of our creation, engrafting into God’s lineage, spreading the Blessing, building harmonious, God-centered families with three generations, and knowing the power of true love and living for the sake of others as key ingredients to peace to a much broader base of people. The Universal Peace Federation is advancing God’s Blessing to the world at an accelerated pace.

I have witnessed how the Universal Peace Federation is allowing "non-core" families and couples to receive the grace of True Parents’ Blessing. I have met many Ambassadors for Peace who have taken wholehearted responsibility of events to being involved in organizing as well as inviting guests. With the Universal Peace Federation, True Parents are directly witnessing new spiritual children as Ambassadors for Peace who will support and contribute as active participants in our movement at all levels of society in each country.

The speeches given by our True Parents and delivered during the last three world tours will probably comprise someday the core of our Unification canon, since even True Father has stated within the text itself that they are the "summary of his divine teaching." As I contemplate about the speeches even further, I derive a deep sense of urgency from our True Parents. The message of true love or living for the sake of others, true life, true lineage, and the Blessing seem like on the surface simple concepts. Especially for Unification blessed families, I think it is easy for us to lose the preciousness of these words because we have been exposed to them many times. However, if we reflect on how True Father and True Mother have uncovered these truths, then the concepts attain a more profound meaning.

True Father and True Mother each have faced tremendous suffering during the course of their lifetime both externally and internally as well as both spiritually and physically. They have experienced occupation of their homeland, the horrors of war, starvation, beatings, torture, imprisonment, persecution, ridicule, betrayal, theft, and so forth. They have overcome all the ungodly forces that Satan has thrown at them with the power of true love and forgiveness. Having set the proper historical and providential conditions and leaving no room for Satan to attack, True Parents have uncovered these precious truths to liberate God, individuals and nations. Rather than becoming victims to the cruelty that Satan and the world bestowed on them, True Parents have always and continue to subjugate Satan and give blessing to the world with the authority of true love. They have built this movement and global family not based on hate or revenge but on the force of true love and absolutely living for the sake of others. I, myself, have had the tremendous honor to receive on many occasions their forgiveness, grace, patience, and love. So, the words in these speeches given by our True Parents are empowering and challenging us to do the same. Through these words and the authority of their example, True Parents have given us the force to recreate our relationships, families, and eventually restore the world back to God. As many Ambassadors for Peace have stated, this message is timely and relevant for today’s world.

During the course of the tours, I had the tremendous privilege of meeting many great people. It was a joy and an honor to spend the time I had with them, even though the pace of the tours was fast. It is difficult to describe here the wealth of experiences that were compacted into such a short period of time. It would take a very long time for me to give each individual justice with a proper explanation. However, like flipping through the pages of a photo album, I would like to briefly share some of the experiences that I had of the tour.

I could sense how dedicated and serious our True Parents were in accomplishing these tours such as True Father watching the 2nd WPT tours in Chung Pyung over the Internet and following every single line of the speech intensely as it was being read by True Mother and True Children. Also, even when True Mother had the flu, chills, and fever in her body, she bravely went on stage to give the speech without allowing the guests to notice her pain. The True Children and True Grandchildren displayed a tremendous amount of filial piety from big thing to little things, such as the True Children and True Grandchildren delivering the speech with tears, inheriting True Parents’ urgent heart, to my wife, Sun Jin, and True Granddaughter Shin Mi giving True Mother massages and doing whatever it took to support and comfort her during the course of the tours.

I was also able to get a first-hand glimpse of the spectrum of blessed families and Ambassadors for Peace that comprises our global movement today. I was moved by their dedication, sacrifice, history, and love for God, True Parents, and their nation. I learned so much through them. Similar to looking at a snapshot or a photograph, I hope one will be able to gain the essence of the experience with the simple description of each encounter. Many of these encounters are memorable and inspiring. For instance, I was moved by the smile of a pregnant mother as she was drinking the holy wine and bowing to her husband; a brother who had been imprisoned for several years under former communist governments as a missionary; a mother of another missionary who had been imprisoned who donated her house to use as a church center in the memory of her child; a young member, despite receiving direct criticism and harshness of a critical audience, had the courage and strength to give me assurance that things would be better next time; a brother sharing his pride that he supported the national movement by fundraising for seven years; a young blessed child whose parents had passed away but who was working and saving on her own to go to the blessing; praying with church leaders and members as they took me to the national Holy Grounds that True Parents have sanctified during their world tour in 1965 and 1968; a sister asking me to thank True Parents for her because True Parents gave her husband and her the blessing although both their parents were divorced; a blessed child who was sharing about her two-year experience in European STF and how much she had grown spiritually through that experience; an elder member who had been in the church for 40 years and taking care of us as part of the hospitality team; a blessed member who did everything to organize the event because of lack of manpower, from scheduling, being the MC, giving the slide show presentation on the purpose and mission of the UPF, moving stage props, inviting friends, neighbors, and relatives to the event as well as even having her own children doing the performance; Ambassadors for Peace who were inspired by their experiences in Chung Pyung and inter-religious conferences who organized events themselves and invited many participants to receive the Blessing.

In addition, I had the experience of sharing many concerns with our blessed families related to pragmatic issues of building communities of blessed families. Many blessed family members were concerned about issues of the blessing and raising second generation, such as how to guide young people who recently received the blessing as well as how to deal with their children who are questioning the life of faith and are not sure about getting blessed. Also, many shared concerns about how to create good organizations so that we can sustain forever the message and legacy of True Parents and grow our blessed family communities.

The one phrase that I was able to pick up very quickly during the tour was, "Thank you." With that in mind, I would like to thank True Parents for giving me true love, true life, and true lineage and the Blessing with their blood, sweat, and tears. Also, I would like to thank all the brothers and sisters for their investment and effort to make the tours a success as well as their warm and generous hospitality, from sharing their homes to sharing their meals. Thank you for truly making me and all of us feel like a part of your family, a global family with True Parents as all our parents.