My dearest Blessed Sisters,

First of all I would like to express my deepest gratitude to our Heavenly Father that I could get to know so many of you and listen to your life-story. Most of you had tears in your eyes when you shared about your life in Korea because it has been one filled with many tears. I am aware that all kinds of tears have been flowing down your faces, which may include for some of you painful tears of crying out to God, asking why you should find yourself in the given situation which included much misunderstanding and in many cases also mistreatment which is not easy to bear and to digest without developing resentments.

Some of you have been completely victorious in your heart and could find deep peace with our Heavenly Father despite your challenging reality while for others the situation you encountered seemed too much to bear, with the consequence that you closed your heart to a certain extent, withdrawing from building deep relationships. Others turned to a more external way of life, seeking to compensate the lack of love with some form of physical pleasure, concentrating on earning money and using it to secure a certain level of material comfort.

During the past six months of meeting you as Filipinas married to Koreans, Blessed Han-Fil families, I saw various extreme situations, even heartbreaking ones. I was invited to your homes in a town or city and I also went out into the remote countryside to saw the reality of one or the other among those who live in a rural area. All of you whom I could meet in your homes welcomed me warmly and you shared the best you could, which makes me indeed indebted to you.

I cannot repay what you have done for me but I will do my best not to disappoint the hopes which have been expressed regarding my investment for you. I am very sorry that I could not live up to the expectations which one or the other may have related to my dedication to support the Han-Fil community. I apologize for every situation in which I may have hurt somebody and hope that ultimately any bad feelings can be fully removed from your lives, especially in relationship to the ones who are the cause of substantial suffering in your life.

Most of you are in a situation where you have to deal with a spouse who is not close to our True Parents and our movement, who does not share your ideals deeply. This means much disappointment and heart-pain including a feeling of lack of love which needs to be compensated. For such a reason a substantial part of those who came to Korea from the Philippines to start a Blessed Family life drifted away form our church and attend other churches who offer in general a more "comfortable" path of salvation. In this respect I would like to thank all of you for your endurance and faithfulness to the heavenly way of self-sacrifice for the sake of other people's happiness.

We all agree that it is important for each person to find his or her personal relationship with God, who may guide us in various ways to the same goal of the complete healing of our hearts and our final destination of living in true happiness as a Blessed Family. The way to this goal may be long, very long in some cases, but I wish that all of you can claim the victory already now in your hearts and live with the dignity of being a beloved daughter of our Heavenly Father.

You have been suffering more or less innocently and therefore it is crucial that you offer your tearful course to our Father in Heaven, allowing Him to claim your sacrificial offering for a higher purpose, especially the national restoration of the country for which you left your homeland and your beloved ones behind.

It is a challenge for each one of us to develop such an intimate relationship with our Father in Heaven that He can guide us directly from morning to night as we go through our days, pursuing our daily work and personal endeavors, whatever they may be. A core question is surely whether or not we strive to cultivate our individual relationship with our beloved Heavenly Father so that He can lead us fully in our daily life that we may experience His presence again and again, and receive from such precious encounters the strength to go on, no matter how tough the internal or external difficulties which we are facing may be.

As I look back at the past half year which I could spend in Korea including two visits to the Philippines I can confidently say that it has been a time blessed by our Heavenly Father, which does not mean that I could avoid going through extreme heartistic sufferings, shedding more tears than ever before in my life.

The ones who received my letters in which I shared about my work as missionary to Georgia are aware that I left a comfortable job in Austria behind, where I could spend most of my working hours according to my own preference like studying Father's words and sharing with others via the Internet, in order to go to a country where the foundation of our movement has been rather poor, and after establishing a victorious foundation there I moved on to invest myself in the Fatherland of our faith.

If we want to harvest we cannot avoid the path of indemnity, but it is important that we are aware that paying indemnity is ultimately a blessing and brings us closer to our Heavenly Father. In this respect I can only repeat that all the challenges which I faced during the past year in Georgia and in Korea turned ultimately into a blessing of my being able to deepen my relationship with our Father in Heaven substantially. There is surely nothing more precious for us to experience in our life than the presence of God's love which has no borders or limitations, but leads to endless joy in our hearts.

Of course it is not easy to find a profound closeness with the Cosmic Parent of humankind. Many a spiritual and heartistic battle has to be won in order to secure a stable relationship with our Origin -- our loving Heavenly Father and deeply comforting Heavenly Mother in whatever way we may experience the presence and intimate touch of the One who loves us endlessly but still has to get through to us beyond our oftentimes closed hearts.

My dearest Sisters, allow me to ask how deeply are we opening our hearts to our Creator, the Cosmic Parent of Heaven and Earth? How far do we go in our relationships with one another in order to reach an intimate closeness of hearts? Personally I am convinced that these are essential questions that need to be addressed and the basic reason why I address you in this letter. It is ever so painful to see so many closed hearts which should in reality be wide open with profound love pouring forth, touches others deeply in their souls.

With whom do we connect in heart, my dearest sisters and brothers (to include also those husbands or brothers who may read these lines)? Do we establish bonds of heart and build "heart to heart bridges" between us that are strong enough to carry us through the rough hours of life? Some of us may have crossed a symbolic bridge while participating in a "bridge of peace" ceremony, embracing the person who came to meet us, sharing with one another and even developing real friendship, while most of us have probably only read or heard about such ceremonies.

There are many ways of expressing our heart and our love for one another but the most important question is whether or not we really invest our hearts into others. We may be a friendly person and try hard to avoid giving others any unpleasant experiences, but still preserve a rather closed heart, keeping others at a certain distance. Do we allow other people to get through to our innermost souls or do we prefer to have a few invisible barriers set up in case somebody wants to come close to us, because this person might see what is going on inside of us?

I have no desire to evaluate your internal situation our conscience tells us anyway what reality is like in me and in you but I do worry whether or not we establish the urgently needed bonds of hearts with one another. It may seem more opportune to keep others internally at a certain distance, but in the long run we are on the losing side with such an attitude, because we miss out on the most important aspect of our lives -- to experience profound joy based on deep heart to heart relationships.

I suppose all of you are by now familiar with the important direction that Father gave one day after his 89th birthday, asking that one third of all members from the Philippines, Taiwan, and Canada should go to Japan to work there to support the world providence. You are elder members who went out to serve another country, to dedicate your life to love the people of Korea. You are doing already what Father asked everyone to understand on that day, "that Korea must be protected as the homeland. The unification of Korea must be achieved peacefully."

Please encourage your brothers and sisters to take this direction of our True Parents close to their hearts and to fulfill it not only symbolically but substantially as your nation has successfully done already in the past. Please help those back in the land of your birth to find the courage to make this step and to go forward with confidence that our Heavenly Father will guide them once they are ready in their hearts to make the given task of supporting the worldwide providence their own, even if they do not have to do it. As grown up children -- daughters who have become mothers -- it is important to understand the needs of the worldwide family and respond to them even though we may not have been explicitly asked by our True Parents.

The mindset Father requests especially of the members of these countries which represent the mother nations of the world is the readiness to unite centering on Japan and to practice an heart as it is expressed in the challenge: "You must have the attitude that you will work harder than your sons and daughters and all the nations of the world".

As sisters from one of these four nations, standing in the role of a mother, you are called to help the Japanese members as they cannot continue to sustain the burden of supporting the world peace movement by themselves. Father asked that those four nations take collective responsibility in order to support Japan in fulfilling its incredibly huge task.

On that first day after his birthday Father emphasized: "The Unification movement is a most serious organization. The four nations of Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, and Canada are very important in God's providence. God has prepared for this moment in history for 2,000 years." This means that you are asked to be especially serious in your heart and mind, in your concern to fulfill your mission not only as a family but most of all on a worldwide level, where your nation had been chosen as a Second Daughter Nation. But meanwhile True Parents expect you to have grown up, and to take full responsibility as a mother nation, to secure the fulfillment of God's will in these decisive final five years.

I left my family behind to be a missionary in a far off land, which meant that I could not just freely return home to be with the ones closest to my heart. Being externally separated for a longer period from the ones we love the most, is of course an extremely painful situation, which our True Parents have endured in many ways, but going through it victoriously turns out to be a deep blessing, which is obvious for me upon my return.

My wife and I had moved to new places more than a dozen times since we began our family life, which meant also that the life of each of our four children started in a different country. I would have surely preferred to have my own family close and to enjoy our relationships substantially without any external separation, but I made this offering, in order to love other families more than my own, to love the children of other parents more than my own children. I did my best to live up to such a standard which our True Parents proclaim in the first peace message as the only way to gain the natural subjugation of Satan.

Aren't we all in a position that we are challenged to follow this course of loving other families more than our own? Is it not the desire of each one of us to get rid of any traces of evil influences in our lives by being victorious in the realm of loving even our enemies? How successful have we been in this respect so far?

Please my dearest Blessed sisters, wives and mothers let us take such questions close to our hearts -- just as all Blessed brothers, husbands and fathers are called to do. Is it true that we care deeply about being victorious in this most essential realm of achieving the complete separation from Satan by being ready to love even those who are most difficult for us to relate with, so that our Heavenly Father can embrace us with all of His love? How do we invest ourselves for this very purpose of standing completely on God's side, enabling Him to claim us fully and to remain with us continuously in this New Era of High Noon, when He can dwell with each one of us closely?

Yes, we heard it many times, that now is the Era After the Coming of Heaven, where we should experience heaven in our daily lives, living happy lives that are blessed richly. Most of us are probably well familiar with the content that Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim share in this respect in the weekly Cheon Il Guk Family Services. Isn't it a pleasure to experience them speaking so freely and sincerely to us, encouraging us to walk a path which draws God's blessing down into our lives?

Especially those who attended the Divine Principle lecture series which Hyung Jin Nim offered in the second half of last year are surely grateful for the internal guidance he conveyed on these occasion, experiencing firsthand the preciousness of spending time with True Children -- with Yeon Ah Nim being present whenever it was possible. They are both dedicated to giving themselves completely so that others may find new hope and new life.

They have been sharing freely from their hearts, touching many of us to tears at one occasion or another. Isn't it now time to show our gratitude by following their example ourselves substantially on that level? Especially as representatives of the country which has been chosen to stand in the position of the second daughter/mother, you are called to manifest an excellent standard in the realm of heart, moving others through your example to follow our True Parents' tradition of investing everything for the sake of the rebirth of God's children.

As far as I know, most of you watch the recordings of the weekly Cheon Il Guk Family Services through the internet or listen to them, while others may only have the chance to read the content shared on these precious occasions. Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim are dedicated to build a church which is overflowing with the love of God and our True Parents. It is our challenge to offer our share to this great task of allowing God's love to be fully alive in this world.

May each one of us be able to contribute more and more for this common goal of building one family under God, in which all members love each other dearly, and care for one another from the bottom of our hearts.

For this I hope and pray in deepest appreciation for everything you have sacrificed already for the fulfillment of God's Will until this very day,

Sincerely,

Your brother Nikolaus