There were intense spiritual phenomena during that time. Our center was doing chain fasts, prayer conditions, cold shower conditions, fundraising and witnessing and lecture practicing conditions.

There was even speaking in tongues during evening prayer, and prophesying. It didn’t happen to me but I saw it happen. It was like the Pentecost in the Bible. We didn’t eat or sleep for three days. We took cold showers to stay awake. The spiritual world told us that Father was coming to New Hampshire. It was a severely cold winter. Headquarters later reported to Father what we were doing, and he said to stop fasting and not sleeping. He said we shouldn’t be controlled by the spirit world or we would be physically killed. As it turned out, Father really was coming. The spirit world’s time didn’t match the physical realm.

Father was on a speaking tour, and at that time was coming to Boston. The IOWC teams and state centers mobilized. We sold tickets, we witnessed and taught the Principle. It was really tough. The Day of Hope Tour came to Boston in October of ’73. We worked hard but results were poor. Most of us cried every night because we couldn’t sell even one ticket. After Father came to Boston was when the spiritual world came down in New Hampshire and we didn’t eat or sleep for three days.

During the speaking tours, Father hardly slept. The travel schedule was incredible. Mother was right there beside Father the whole time, leaving their children behind in the care of others, in order to take care of us. Father gave public speeches, but also spent hours giving us love and guidance. He met with the VIPs first and then would gather us together and ask us questions. He answered our questions too, and took us out to eat at Burger King or McDonald’s. True Parents bought us food or ate with us while their children were in New York. They must have been so lonely.

During that time (Day of Hope tours) one member received many names from the spiritual world. We didn’t know any of these people. There was a long list. For each person’s name, three members had to do a 7-minute cold shower. It got so crazy that I remember going into a cold shower for 28 minutes, 7 minutes each for 4 people. There was no time to get out of the shower! We went to the apartment of a new member and borrowed her shower and towels. Then we borrowed the showers of two other new members. It was crazy, but we didn’t care what people thought. We loved Father and would do anything for him. Several very special people joined during this. Peter Grogan was one of them.

True to the prophesies we had received, Father really did come to New Hampshire several months later. We were young and innocent and struggled a lot. I was 19. We invested all we could because Father was coming. We fundraised door to door and in parking lots in the bitter cold. We went witnessing and ticket selling. I was sent out to pioneer a center for a brief period when I was young in the church. I became spiritually open and True Parents came to me. Father shared his deep love and encouragement with me and his hope and vision for that city.

I experienced the attack of the evil spiritual world and the help of the good spiritual world. During those times of hard work and sacrifice, Father gave us signed pictures or pins. Sometimes he made sashimi for us with fish he had caught himself. Father and Mother took us shopping sometimes. On many occasions Father bought ties or suits for brothers or scarves or dresses for sisters.

I was in training at Barrytown before the seminary started. Father came there every other day or every day to teach us himself. He spent hours there. I couldn’t always catch his words because of spiritual interference. Every Sunday and every Holy Day the True Family gathered at the New Yorker or Belvedere. Father personally holy salted every one of those places. Even with all of our inability to put into practice what Father has asked us to do, and even though it is often our own fallen nature that is stopping us, Father has continued to pour out his love and encouragement. He has faith in us and doesn’t quit investing, sacrificing and fighting the spiritual garbage.

It’s my sincere prayer that every person who reads this testimony can gain something of value. It’s my sincere hope that all those whom I have hurt along the way can forgive me and can deeply experience God’s and True Parents’ heart of love for us.

We were called to attend Father’s speech at Madison Square Garden. When our team arrived, we couldn’t go inside. After a while some people got up and left, so we were finally able to go in. The victory of True Father was not the fact that the hall was packed. It was something different. When I saw my beloved Father, the Messiah, I was shocked. He was investing everything and people were sleeping. People walked out in the middle of his speaking. I saw someone carrying on a conversation with the spiritual world. I was shocked by the audience. Some people were listening besides our members. The atmosphere was so terrible, though, people couldn’t hear or receive his words. His victory, in my opinion, was that he invested everything, gave everything and persevered no matter what people did.

Following the completion of the twenty-one-city tour in Los Angeles on January 29, 1974, the movement immediately launched another Day of Hope tour with the theme "The New Future of Christianity." This tour, which carried the Day of Hope to thirty-two American cities in sixty-four days, included an opening night banquet and a second night speech by Rev. Moon at each stop.

With the completion of the thirty-two-city tour, Rev. Moon had proclaimed his message publicly in all fifty states. To conduct campaigns in this drive from Maine to Hawaii, three IOWC advance teams from the twenty-one-city tour were increased to seven teams of seventy members. Each of these teams were given itineraries for four or five two-week campaigns in preparation for the Day of Hope programs. According to Rev. Moon, the tour had "created in two weeks a foundation in every state which would have taken two or three years otherwise."

The movement hoped to reap a harvest of new members as a result of the Day of Hope tours. To facilitate these goals, the Sun Myung Moon Christian Crusade (SMCC) sponsored a ten-city "Celebration of Life" tour that evangelized a selected city in each of the ten regions of the country. Beginning in the Bay Area, the itinerary included stops in Seattle; St. Paul, Minnesota; Austin, Texas; New Orleans; Miami, Florida; Columbus, Ohio; Louisville, Kentucky; Boston; and Rochester, New York.

Billed as "A 21st Century Experience," programs included an hour and fifteen minutes of entertainment: songs, solos, skits, dances and testimonials, followed by forty-five minutes of inspiration from "God’s Colonel," Bo Hi Pak, on key points of the Unification Principle. Week-long stops in each city featured Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday performances and a weekend Celebration of Life workshop. The concern was to find a successful formula of mass evangelization. As a result of tour innovations, advance preparation and media coverage, the Celebration of Life drew substantial crowds. SMCC’s "World Premiere" May 15-17, 1974, at the Paramount Theater in Oakland drew 2,600 guests and 34 participants for a weekend workshop in the Santa Cruz Mountains. By Boston, the three-day total was up to 7,562. Equally important was the emergence of New Hope Singers International and the Korean Folk Ballet. Both would make signal contributions to the Day of Hope’s culminating eight-city tour, scheduled to begin in September, 1974 at Madison Square Garden.

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