It  has been confirmed that our International President, Pastor Hyung Jin Nim and his wife, Yeon Ah Nim  will come to the UK on Monday 23rd August and spend  a few days here to meet brothers and sisters before going on to visit the rest of Europe.

I am sure you will all look forward to meet them with your families and guests, so let us all prepare well to receive them and inspire them.

FFWPU Annual Gathering at Cleeve House

We have decided to move the Annual Gathering in Cleeve House to Tuesday 24th August (originally set for Saturday 21st August) so that all our Blessed families can have a chance to meet with Pastor Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim in our own beautiful environment .
We did not want to miss our traditional summer Annual Gathering and it was thought  difficult to gather UK members from all over the nation twice within a few days, so it seemed a wonderful opportunity to ask Hyung Jin Nim to speak to everyone at Cleeve on 24th.  We have there facilities for the younger children to enjoy the bouncy castles, games, etc.
Please try to book time off work if you need to. More details will come soon.

Recently the squad of our community football team, Mind Body United met up with their coach/manager, Steven Huish, and team chairman, Chigo Ahunanya, for an end of season party and ceremony. Each player, even those who only made a couple of showings….like myself, received a beautiful certificate and the chance to take a picture with Stevo&Chigo.

We had the player of the year award which went to Seijin Thomas for his all round skill, commitment and team work.

Big congratulations to all the staff and team members who made the launch year for MBU a real adventure. They go into a new season this autumn with a level of trust, commitment, skill, and team spirit that will only result in them moving up the league table.

Pics below (sorry couldn’t get everyone’s) and a little video of Seijin’s player of the year speech.

(click on pic to double the size…if you want to check how handsome everyone is.)

Video insight: Seijin cracks a few…

As a team they even walked away with some league silver ware winning best sportsmanship of the year award. This is significant because part of the team’s mission statement involves team members being role models for other young people. Next season they’ve got their eye on a few other trophies.

Just back from Korea. Here is a little video from the iPhone with some highlights, spent some of the flight back messing around with imovie:

Diary notes: video explanation

7.30 Saturday morning 10th July:

True Parents have just arrived by helicopter out of the blue and are talking to a few hundred of us. Father’s checking to see which of his close disciples are here. He ends up staying with us until 2.30pm. He mentions how he hasn’t slept the night before. Finding it hard to keep up with his train of thought. True Father is like a cosmic encyclopedia. And he is jumping from topic to
topic before I can deconstruct the English translation…but he must be the sweetest grandfather in the whole world: completely at ease and full of the brightest energy. It’s not easy for me to sit for so long when I don’t speak Korean. But eventually I realise that Father’s main motive for being here is to just be together with us for as long as possible. That’s when I really get it, and catch this 90 year old man’s heart for his disciples, his children.Several times he asks if we are hungry and that he should get back to Yeusu, and then he decides to stay longer, talk more, sing more, etc. You get the sense of how he has been through so much in his life that nothing phases him. At one point he said about his life (amongst the hundreds of different things he shared about) “….I couldn’t go forward as I planned to, I was a man alone, but God supported me and you supported…”

giving us his time

Here is a link to the message Father gave on the 8th July in front of several thousand up on the mountain top:

http://www.slideshare.net/familyfireplace/july-8th-2010-proclamation-full-speech

Peace TV:

I heard from Peter Kim, who I bumped into in the new Coffee shop in Cheong Pyeong, that True Parents were very happy after hearing from Rev. Song about Europe. Especially True Mother was happy to hear about the younger generation in our community, and I think they noticed how many came as part of the European group for the event on the 8th July. She asked Peace TV to talk to Rev. Song to do an item on us, so I was called in with Geros Kunkel from the European Youth Dept. to their studios a few hours before my flight back to London.

Geros looking like a TV presenter - ready to give the GOOD news

Mr Kim Seog Byung - CEO of Pyong il Communications Ltd

Here is Father’s speech at the:

“Convention to Proclaim the Word that Firmly Establishes the Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind.”

July 8th 2010 proclamation full speech

View more documents from Family Federation.

And here are some pictures from some of us in Father’s event this morning, a brief personal account, and notes from Hyung Jin Moon’s talk a couple of hours ago:

Classic build up: lights went on at 3.45am (not sure why), had a nice naked wash and shave with a few others in the mens toilets, in the sink. Sat on a coach for 45 minutes, then it moved, went up the hill to the palace/museum. The time was 6am ish, the ‘convention to proclaim the word that firmly establishes the True Parents’ was due to start at 10am. Thankfully at the top of the mountain there was some breeze and the clouds were mercifully in front of the sun for some of the time.

arriving on the clouds, literally

Father was full of his usual poise and shared both deeply and humorously. He shared how he had just dyed his hair and how he always does before these occasions. I heard he had been up to 3.30am talking to his close disciples. As the sun grew stronger and I went to find the shade of a tree and take my jacket off in order to sweat less, I reminded myself that Father at 90 years old, had been standing at the podium for more than an hour in his suit.

Click on the pics to make them big.

Elisa Brann studying Father's speech as he reads and adds to it.

thirsty work

Keishin Barrett focusing on the Word

Jonathan and Alex study together on the wall.

After we had no buses so we (8000 people) had to walk down the mountain. Our calf muscles felt the gradient. And I was glad I had followed the advice of others and had not brought one of the boys with me. Not sure they would have handled the schedule and not sure how I would have managed carrying one of them down on my back….

Here are my notes from Hyung Jin Moon’s message to us this afternoon at the start of a 2 day Original Divine Principle seminar that father asked us all to join after the event today:

“True Father said today we should go back to our roots. Our unification movement tradition has a very short history of only 50 years and in that short time it has spread across the whole world, and of course as a result we have many limitations as well.

We want to go back to the core of True Parents revelation and the essence of the Divine Principle.

When I was in Brazil recently we read Father’s  autobiography in our morning study and we were discussing about our faith and our fate.

Our fate is connected to the path that we take. There are a series of decisions that we make that determine our future.

If you look back at your life you can see this reality.

WE MUST KNOW where we are heading. There is a biblical verse in Proverbs where king Solomon was looking out of a window and saw a young man walking on a path, and he could see that young man’s future. On one side of the path there was a very decadent town with a big red light district, towards which the young man was heading.

King Solomon compared him to a cow that is heading to the abattoir

However the young man did not see that future as he was thinking about something else, about happy thoughts of a very beautiful woman who had invited him to the town. So the young man was having a very sweet dream, but king Solomon had seen many men walking down this path and knew what fate he would have; that he would become trapped by this town of decadence. (this is somewhere in Proverbs apparently…no ref. was given…but William Haines helped me find it, he uses it in his lecture on the Human Fall. See the link to Proverbs 7 here: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+7&version=NIV )

We can see from this that the path we are taking is always connected to our future. And when there is the opportunity to look down on that path with objectivity we can see where it will lead.

The reason I am telling you this story is that this young man did not realise that this choice he was making would effect his life so significantly.  There are many choices that come up in our life: these are essentially the paths that we chose to take in our life.

We have to always ask ourselves what is the path I am taking and where is it leading to. Brothers and sisters, we are seeking the eternal path. We are not seeking the transient or temporary path.

That is the path of seeking True Parents, which is eternal.  That is our bright and eternal future.

We are not to centre one generation or another. We have an eternal centre which is True Parents. If you look at Christianity, there have been many saints and church leaders, but they have always focused on Jesus’ eternal love, rather than their own significance.

If we forget that we will find ourselves going on the wrong path with out noticing it…

We will always be True Parents children….

….After my elder brother past away I started to doubt whether God existed, and with that kind of mind I started studying religion, and then I started training……

When I go before True Parents I do not go as an adult, regardless of however many responsibilities and positions he has bestowed on me. When I go into the room, Father does not see an international president, but he sees his youngest son, and that is when I feel the greatest freedom and love. I don’t feel the need to have to prove anything to them and this is the most precious quality time for me.

We should get rid of thoughts we have that put us in the context of some official position when we are in front of True Parents. Of course it is important to be mature in our actions and in our words, but as Jesus said in order to go to the Kingdom of Heaven we need the heart of a child.

Through this important proclamation today there are a lot of expectations….

It is because of this 120 day workshop which has just been completed that a war could be prevented between the North and South Korea. Even the sinking of the naval ship did not bring about war. Because these leaders who went through the 120 day workshop and united with True Parents and continued through out the 120 days faithfully (from UK: Constance Rennie and Haesul Fagcang) an important condition could be set by True Parents.

We do not know what conditions are being set by this 2 day workshop that we are starting now on Father’s request, we do not know how big a condition can be made by even the offering of a pigeon.

If we can think like that we will go down one path, if we look cynically and with disinterest we will go down another path. How we take this short workshop is a decision we will make.

That young man thought he was going to be with the beautiful woman for just one night and he did not realise how that one night would have a big effect on his life course, …for us this one night , and two days workshop will also involve us making a decision that will effect our path and our future. Let has have that kind of awareness and heart.

Let us look into our hearts and either have king Solomon’s perspective , or the blissfully unaware perspective of the young man who was oblivious to the choices that he was making regarding his future.

Let us go on a path of seeking True Parents in our life.”

We headed straight out and over to Hyde Park after worship on Sunday morning. Well, it’s never straight over when your a big crowd and there are small babies to feed etc. but we all congregated eventually at our holy ground by the plain tree.

here’s a short video with a sound track from one of my favourite old tribe called quest tracks:

The message this week and I guess for the next few weeks is about ‘developing spiritual maturity’. We started to look at what it means to become a disciple and how that path is first a choice, secondly requires commitment, and thirdly is experienced through a relationship

Here is the power point:

and if you want more of the content, here is the message on our Ustream archive:

It was a good to see our momentum building through the summer which is normally a difficult time for church development as we all head off for different projects and holidays.

I can see we still have a lot to do, and however well things go, somewhere in me I get the feeling something is still missing, like we are not there yet. Quite a few people came an hour early for worship today cuz I sent an email out about getting together to pray. I felt like; “this is our first service in the 2nd half of 2010, and we’ve got to do something to let God know that we know we have 6 months to the end of the year, and that we want to get our plans together with his.

So we prayed for all our family members, for their lives, and for our community’s goals and hopes. We know that in order to grow in number we have to be more concerned to grow closer together through fellowship, and becoming a channel for each other to experience God’s love.

A big thank you to all who helped out in all those different ways. Especially the people who were taking on roles from staff who were away. Thank you for making it work! One HARP member came all the way in from Collingdale to set up the sound and mikes on Saturday evening, and then came in again for 9am on Sunday to do a sound test with Chris and George. That’s commitment.

It’s LIVE LOUNGE tonight at 43 Lancaster Gate tonight at 7pm. EVERYONE invited. It is a great place to come and unwind and just let the music flow into your soul and wash away all those stresses and cares that build up through the week.

CHeck out this video of Isobel from the last session, to see what I mean:

All proceeds go to support the new Music Ministry project that is rising up from the LG basement.

You will not regret the journey....

…in their lunch break. Franklin Fortune was explaining how you can tell all the good players in the World CUp because they have been trained by Man. Utd. We had our monthly get together. It was good.

There were a lot of inspiring testimonies from different people that spanned from:

- someone paying Simon Rosselli’s kids £20 to NOT wash their car as they went on a house to house fundraiser

-to a member in North London who couldn’t sleep one night and went out early at 4.30am to put outreach flyers through her neighbours’ doors. One of them had also found it hard to sleep and had been up praying at 5am; when the flyer with True Parents picture came through the door. She went to our site and found out that there was a prayer evening in LG and came along the same day with her husband to take part.

We discussed the arrival of Father’s biography in a week or so and organising a book launch. And a long list of other topics…

After lunch we had a short presentation on a seminar I had attended on practical time management. I think the concept of learning how to delegate well was an attractive one for all of us. Basically we want to skill up our staff more and organise more training, this was a step towards that:

We meet on Wednesdays now because there is always just too much going on in the communities on the weekend these days. It’s a good sign.

Here are some more pictures:

hello familyfireplace community

getting down to business

(he missed the group pic.) Mind Body United chairman: Chigo gave a good update on the team. They got some silver for best sportsmanship.

Had a long but good community leaders meeting today. Gave a little power point on time management too, which felt good. But By 5pm I was really wiped out. Cancelled one evening meeting, but still had our regular Wednesday prayer evening at 7.30pm. Watched some TV to unwind, since we have a big screen now in our reception area. It never really works for me, TV, when I need to de stress.

Went up to our main hall to prepare the chairs etc at around 6.50pm and light the prayer candle.

some times we need others to shed light on our state of mind

Still feeling a bit fried. wondering if anyone was going to come, feeling a bit shaky, I knew there were some people in the building, but hey maybe they’re not up for it tonight…you can guess where my mind and heart were going. Was doing a reasonable job of coming to terms with what I had decided was a solitary evening. (God’s telling me: “leave that for me to decide”, not that I was listening.)

Especially by 7.30pm on my watch, I am thinking ‘yep I’m on my own’. I am half German – everything should start as the second hand strikes 12.

Decided to go down and see if everyone had opted to watch the football instead and thought I might invite people up. But as I was going down, people were on their way up – the guys who were in LG to practice for Live Lounge, Masa from our HQ congregation, and Aska from Bromley who had been helping in the UPF office.

That prayer evening tonight was seriously the best part of my day. I felt that we could not know how precious it was for God that we came together to pray. We sang a few songs, I asked everyone for their thoughts on some notes I took from Hyung Jin Moon’s talk. And then I asked Aska to pray – she shared the most exquisite prayer that just gave me the chance to wash my face clean. Then we prayed altogether for a while.

giving thanks

I was so grateful to those young people for just being there and giving me the chance to pray with them. I had been pretty wound up and strung out from an intense day, and had got into my ‘no one wants to pray thought-train’, but they just came because they wanted to and through that example lifted me up and out of my fear. Thanks guys.

I hoped to write and post something while in Korea but the wifi was almost non existent.

Here is a summary of my visit. Not everything is here, but it is nevertheless LONG, so please skip to the headings that interest you:

Holy day celebration:

limited consciousness on my part – my body clock was in disarray. Reminded me of the importance of preparing for these occasions. If you were to be invited to Buckingham Palace how would you prepare? Father was full of energy and in good form. At one point he spoke about the Union Jack and so got to see it through his eyes which is characteristically very different to how we might understand it. Couldn’t fully grasp his description. Nevertheless it was inspiring to see it is on his mind.

After lunch back at our halls of residence as the national leaders group had a few presentations from world mission department staff. There was one about the legal situation with Unification Church International, UCI, (the business group under which a lot of our international church assets are run.) It was complicated and dealt with the fact that Hyun Jin Moon who is the chair has, along with the current board, adapted the constitution which would allow resources to be donated to other not for profit organisations.

The most effective lesson that I picked up was from our International President, Hyung Jin Moon who spoke about the importance of recognizing our own sin. He did not refer to what happened in Brazil at the Sunday Service but it I am sure it is on his mind.

A message about our sin: (taken from my notes on his talk)

We have forgotten we are sinners, and we have forgotten to teach our children that. This is a problem because  without that awareness and the humility that awareness brings are we really able to realize how much we need a saviour?

When I was younger, even though I followed True Parents rules – no smoking, no drugs, no drinking, no dating etc, ….I thought that was it. I expected people to respect me, but I was an arrogant little, ‘small’ boy. I learnt marshal arts so the other kids would be scared of me.

You realize your sins when you start to train on a spiritual  path.

A lot of us as blessed children or Jacobs children never realized we were sinners, because the 1^st generation never told us, never successfully educated us about this.

I was recently with True Parents and I asked True Father about this topic to get some clarity: “Just because I am a blessed child and do not have any original sin, can I go to heaven?” Father said: “absolutely not.”

The wrong education we received has made us v arrogant.

This is partly why many blessed children have turned their backs on True Parents.

We have to realize we commit all sorts of offences against heaven every day.

This is v important for us to understand.

Once we understand that True Parents through their life course have time and again descended into hell to save our souls we will want to give back, not just our money or time, but we will have a natural desire to give our life over to God.

If we don’t get this we will start to believe that we can just make up our own plans and leave True Parents and God out of them.

In our church, as the years have gone by, we have started to shy away from talking about sin too much because we thought to talk about that was negative. We have young people who think they are better than they actually are. That is very dangerous  for us.

It is not the ‘strong’ that God uses, but the weak and the poor. They have one thing, no arrogance before God. Our strength can then start from God.

(The point he was trying to make here reminded me of……

Matthew 5

The Beatitudes

Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn,

for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,

for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful,

for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they will see God. )

If we think we can do this alone, that is the hubris of the arch angel.

There is no age of the 1^st gen or 2^nd gen or 3^rd gen…there is only the age of the True Parents.

No one else walked through the course of the 2^nd advent, the course of the 8 stages.

Also true children we are v different from true parents, we cannot be like them, however many titles True Father gives me, I cannot take True Parents position. There is only one set of True Parents.

Just because we claim to believe in True Parents it doesn’t necessarily mean we actually do believe in True Parents. If it is true, then it must arise in my life – check yourself.

4 ways to watch yourself:

1. am I repenting everyday? Do I carry out a life of repentance every day. Not in suffering and in pain, but repenting in joy, the ability to see that I am flawed and developing my conviction to change.

2. Do I hate the little sins that I commit in my daily life? Don’t think: “God is love so he cannot hate these little things I do” -

because God is love he hates sin of any kind. So the sins we thought so casually about, now we hate them the way God does, we feel the weight of the spirit world watching and judging us.

Just lightly admitting my sin, and not being serious to resolve it is a sign of my arrogance and shows lack of interest in really caring about God’s perspective on my life.

3. The friends that I have, who I choose to associate with: am I only interested in people who make me feel good? But when you feel True Parents have saved you, you want to spend time with people who want to express their love for them, who love them more than anything, you start wanting to be with people of faith who are serious to love God and True Parents.

4. I remember from when I was younger Father’s footprints on the sandy beach of Gloucester. We used to try and step in them, but they were too far apart, and so we would trip and fall. But we just wanted to try our best to do it anyhow, it felt good.

Do we strive to follow the footprints of our True Parents even though we stumble and fall, do we still endlessly try to follow in their footprints?

Raise your hand if you know you are a sinner. I raise my hand with you. That is why these four points can be so beneficial for our life of faith.

These are central points for our life of faith. Just because you are a blessed family it does not necessarily mean you will be able to go to heaven and go close to God.

God will not have to judge us, it is like two magnets that repel each other. Good and evil repel each other.

In spirit world there is no fiery hell, but remember we breathe by God’s love, so if because of our sin we are pushed or pulled away from God’s realm, it will be like being suffocated with out air. (he spoke about the man who is in the Guiness Book Of Records for holding his breath for the longest period of time, …i think it was 18 minutes, and how the last few minutes he was in the most excruciating pain..) So the spirit world is a serious matter for our life and this life is a serious time to prepare for our eternal life.

Just got hold of the original talk:

20100612-IntlPresident Eng from True Love on Vimeo.

Sunday Worship:

The next day we went to the main church in Seoul – Cheon Bok Gung. Initially I was put off by the choirs dress code (they all seemed to be in eveningdress/black tie), but once they got singing I discounted what was a matter of difference in culture and taste. Their singing not only lifted me up, but woke me up out of my jet lag.

They have a coffee shop in the entrance to the temple with some very nicely designed paper coffee cups:

pre worship coffee

We stopped on the way back for some soup with which you each get a personal mini-boiled-chicken with Ginseng in the bowl. Very healthy, but adding salt and eating Kimchi was the only way to get any flavour out of it. Apparently the food was a lot more about the kind of energy it gives you than satisfying any savory needs, bit tough for the Western palate.

Those of us who were from Europe got together with Rev and Mrs Song on Sunday afternoon to share a coffee and our thoughts on the visit. That was a nice time. They really do compliment each other very well as a couple.They very much wanted to hear what each of us had to say, and Rev Song was keen to explain that when he went up to the palace for 5pm he would be sharing our feedback with True Mother. (Father had moved onto Yosu and gone fishing. He had caught something and had had it sent back for that evening for his close disciples and Mother to have some Sashimi.)

Rev and Mrs Song - a great team

Conclusion:

It was a good trip, but as always I am personally glad to be on the flight home. I feel a lesser person away from home. I miss England my church and my family. Waiting for luggage at heathrow I told Rev Song how I don’t know if I could make it as a foreign missionary. He smiled.

Here are a couple of my little clips from the trip.

If music has been a medium to move your heart and touch your soul then you will know how central it can be to successful worship.

pray for God's blessing and light to shine on our music ministry team

A couple of months ago we put out a job description for a music ministry team:

http://familyfireplace.org/2010/04/music-ministry-mission-opportunity-available/

The job was given to Reamonn Bateman and Kathleen Moloney who have already been developing the music in our HQs community over the last 9 months. Kathleen will be studying music part time this year and Reamonn who has also been working with David Franklin in our General Affairs Dept. has been supporting a number of different initiatives in HQ such as the Live Lounge open mic night.

They have now launched the music ministry project with the support of our HQs church and some space in the basement of LG provided by our UK finance committee.

When I was a student back in the early 90s I used to DJ in pubs, clubs, and parties up in Newcastle and for a year I ran the student union’s Reggae Club.

As a result I got a bit distracted from my English Lit. I guess the music brought me together with friends in a way that my studies could not. It moved me.

When I met the church in New York in the summer before my final year at Uni the singing we did before lectures was what opened me up to God’s heart and reality. It was the key that unlocked the door between me and God.

Please see the vision they have set up for this project in the power point below: