Sunday 2nd October Visit to Chicago Church

Alex Cromwell
October 3, 2005

Today all the brothers in Akirasan's group visited Chicago Family Church. We were really determined to serve and inspire the Blessed Families and Blessed Children in Chicago community so we worked really hard on Saturday night and Sunday morning and prepared a couple songs to sing at the service.

We were so grateful that we could attend the Service, and tried our best to contribute to creating a good atmosphere. One of the Chicago Family Church members even said they wished that STF would come to every Service!

After a few members of the Women's Federation gave testimonies about their experiences in China, it was time for our presentation. We sang Blessing of Glory which set a good foundation for one of our brothers, ___ to give his testimony about being on the frontline. He put a lot of heart into his testimony as he talked about how fundraising had helped him to understand all the sacrifices God and True Parents, and our own parents have made for us 2nd Generation throughout the years, and how he felt like he could understand and experience God's heart at least a little bit through fundraising. After he finished his testimony, he went to the back of the room and embraced his parents, who are actually from Chicago. They burst into tears as they embraced each other. It was very moving to see how proud his parents were of him. Also we could see other parents could not help but crying when they heard 2nd Generation testify to the sacrifices of the 1st Generation.

After the service, lunch was served. Everyone spent time mingling with the 2nd Generation from the area. Bishop Kim was really inspired by our desire to serve as much as we could before we left.

We then were asked to go sing at a Christian Baptist Church to celebrate the 85th birthday of the bishop Crawford who is very positive to True Father. We thought we would arrive, sing, and then leave, but we were actually in for a long exciting service. By the time it was our turn to sing, we were actually pretty nervous, because there had been a few solo singers and two professional choirs, and there we were, regular STF members with no special singing ability. But when we got up there and sang, we really put our heart into it, and the people could feel our love and devotion to God. They were so inspired that we actually sang more than one song.

After we sang we had planned on leaving, but we decided to stay and support Bishop Crawford, whose birthday we were celebrating, and listen to his final address. It felt like we were witnessing to the people through the songs that we sang, because of the deep meaning behind Holy Songs.

It was a really good witnessing experience. The next morning Bishop Kim told us that we should be truly proud of ourselves, because not only did we inspire the outside people in the Christian Church, but we also inspired the Chicago Family Church members and Bishop Kim himself. All in all it was a very good experience and we were so grateful that we could attend and find ways to serve...

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