Over the six months since True Parents have been giving the grace of the cosmic blessing from October 09 we have begun to do more again as a community to share the marrige blessing that can be received through True Parents. We made a target to reach 120 couples. We also wanted to do more to provide educational content so that people could catch a profound insight into the value of the ceremony.

We were able to be successful in this effort and ceremonies tool place across most of our communities and you may have seen the reports and testimonies in the news blog. So many people had deep experiences as they went through the program.

To make that happen took a lot of devotion, personal care, and logistical support from a wide range of church members. If you are one of the people who brought friends, helped to prepare the ceremony, taught, took pictures, filmed, organised the refreshments, supported financially, and etc, then please know that you were part of something that, brought blessing to a lot of people, brought joy to God and helped develop His providence in the UK.

A big part of bringing people to True Parents is really about having genuine friendships that give us the opportunity to share freely and deeply about the value of the marriage blessing. A lot of the women in our community who are active members of the WFWP played a big role in inviting people, and we would have been way off reaching 120 couples without them. Thank you, sisters! And especially we can learn from them the power of small groups (I guess they call them coffee mornings.)

sister act

Cake cutting at the end of the conference (Chizuko Barrett on left)

Mrs. Chizuko Barrett went for her 6th visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for three weeks from April to May this year. She went both as a representative of the UPF as well as the WFWP.

Conference Series
As a UPF representative, she delivered a speech on May 2nd to a joint conference with the 80,000 membership Addis Ababa Youth Association, which had recently sent two of its leaders to the UPF Youth Leaders conference in Kenya. The theme of the conference was ‘Volunteerism’.
During her stay, and as part of the 5000 strong Ambassadors for Peace program, Mrs. Barrett supported five other educational events, where between forty and one hundred people came to hear talks on UPF’s  ‘Five principles for peace’. One hundred teachers had come along to one talk on the recommendation of a fellow teacher who had been very moved by attending an earlier session.

Miss Africa in her restaurant

The trip was coordinated between volunteers from Korea, Japan and the UK so that they could set up a local seven-member board to run the project locally. The board now comprises of two women Ambassadors for Peace, Abebech Gobena who is known as Africa’s Mother Theresa, and Miss Hayat, who was Miss Africa 2003. Other board members are the great grandson of Emperor Haile Selassie I, the president of a university, a business man and other people of good standing.

Donation of school books
With her WFWP hat on, Mrs. Barrett donated picture books from the South London community to the One Hope Garden School in Addis Ababa.

One Hope Garden School

The school has been run with support from the Japanese WFWP for the last 12 years, and has graduated over 1,000 children during that time. This is one of a number of African schools, and other projects that has enabled WFWP to gain its General Consultative Status with ECOSOC and the UN DPI.

Ethiopia’s role
While she was in Ethiopia, she was very happy to personally introduce a university student to the teachings of Rev. Moon. She said, “I understand that Ethiopia is always in Rev Moon’s heart because it is one of 16 nations who sent soldiers to the Korean War, indirectly resulting in him being freed from a communist prison camp.”

She also pointed out that Ethiopia is a unique and important nation for the African continent because it is the only nation in Africa which was not colonized by other nations. As a result there are the UN-AFHQ, African Union HQ , and and EU offices in Addis Ababa. She felt that because of that Ethiopia’s success in upholding UPF’s Principles for Peace will be very influential in helping other African nations attaining peace themselves.