Chelsea Old Town Hall

On Sunday 29th in the evening Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim will be arriving in the UK. The next day on the 30th August, the English Bank Holiday Monday, they will meet with all of us in Chelsea Town Hall. Please see below for more details. You should be receiving information from your pastor at church this Sunday and by email.

What I want to talk about right now is understanding why he is coming. I think it is good to ask ourselves that question, and take our time to prepare the heart and mind so that we can connect to our international church president and his wife. Firstly, let us think of what it means for them to come here together. They have several children, and for any parents that is surely a big step, to have to leave them in the care of others, as they visit different continents. Let us not take that for granted.

Hyung Jin nim and the Dalai Lama (click to enlarge)

The next thought that comes to me is that I can already grasp a strong sense of what Hyung Jin Nim’s message is by watching his sermons online, or reading them when Bruno emails them through to me. So what does it add by him coming here? Of course, importantly, it allows him to see where we are, and maybe a bit how we are. But also they are coming representing True Parents and all that that signifies.

Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim are constantly developing their life as disciples to the returning Christ. That is something I believe we all grapple with in our different circumstances in our daily life of faith: ‘I believe, but I often don’t know how to practice.’ So when someone is able to demonstrate a practical vision, in their own life, of how to live with sincere devotion, it can help us enormously.

Being a host:

Being able to host them also allows us to develop a different type of relationship. Recently when visiting members of my congregation in their homes in the evening I am always struck by how special it is to meet like that. How meaningful it is for us to host each other in our homes rather than just meet in meetings or at events. When we are in someone’s home we share an intimate moment/part of their life, because our homes are like the little universe that we create. We pretend less when we are at home. Hyung Jin Nim’s visit to our nation allows him to visit our home – the place where we live, and of course while he is here he will also visit ‘a’ home of one of our family members.

True Father never really stopped inviting us in to his home, but it’s not quite the same when it is hundreds and thousands of people. Father’s hope is that we will adopt that culture of heart, that he pioneered, where people are connected to God’s heart through our hospitality and service.

The heart of a sincere host is that they prepare well, and so I hope we can all prepare a willing and open heart for our visitors at the end of this month. It is not a show, he is not a celebrity, or someone who will solve our problems for us. Rather the give and take that we all have together while they are here can bring a lot of blessing from God if we take the time to pray and reflect about ‘why are they coming.?’ These are just a few of my thoughts, so if you have any good realisations please feel free to post them below. If we want to find meaning it often helps to ask ‘why?’

In 43LG we are offering morning prayers and study at 5am everyday so if you live in London feel free to join us sometime. There is one brother who comes each morning by night bus. We also are doing a 21 day prayer condition every evening that you are welcome to join. But why not get together with some friends in your community, in your home, and pray, or study together over the next week – preparation and a thoughtful heart is a big part of any successful offering.

Here are some practical details:

There will be a meeting where Hyung Jin Nim  will meet and speak to all UK members and children 10 and over.

Venue : Chelsea Old Town Hall, Kings Road, London SW3 5EE
Date and time : Monday 30th August at 10:30 for 11:00am

click map to enlarge

Immediately after his speech, there will be an opportunity to take family photos with Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim. This will need to be organised very smoothly so parents should quickly, after the speech, gather their children together. Immediately after their photo is taken, we encourage families to leave the hall.

Unfortunately it will not be possible to bring younger children to the event due to lack of space, so please try to arrange for care in your community to    allow as many as possible to attend the speech.

The talk will last about 2 hours and the photo sessions should be over by 3:00pm.

In order to cover the costs of this visit there will be a small fee for all those attending. Please pay this to your Pastor and receive an entry ticket from them.
Adults – 18 and over              £10.00
Young people aged 10 -17    £5.00

L-R: Keishin Barrett, Yoshiko Chellew and Mariam Trubshaw

Yoshiko Chellew, Keishin Barrett and Mariam Trubshaw have joined two Swiss and five other people from the UK (Kunimasa, Kuniyoshi Hayashi, Rose Taylor, Sophie Redihough and Seijin Thomas) for a month stay in Japan. They are doing grass rooots witnessing, teaching English, and service work for one month during the summer period. Three CARP centres are supporting the initiative: Horoshima, Tsukuba and the Keisei centre in Tokyo. At the end of their stay they will will meet together in Hiroshima for three or four days for a final service project, and sight seeing.

See Yoshiko, Keishin ands Mariam’s blog here , the Hirosima blog here and Tsukuba blog here. [ed: blog links work now]

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.

“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.”

Here’s the article from the SUN newspaper today (readership of 7.6 million):

click to view - and zoom in - or right click to download

“It was a nice coincidence when I met Emma Cox the journalist that we found out we both studied English Lit. at Newcastle, just I finished two years before she arrived there. I think she has done a good job of creating a narrative through simply telling the story of two couples.

There is so much incredible content to share from The Divine Principle and True Parents life, so we should keep on working on how to communicate it.” (Simon Cooper)