Testimony of Faith

John Doroski

Heavenly Father, Angelic, Ancestor Intercessions

I joined God in building the Kingdom of Heaven on earth in 1970.

Actually, that's not true. I joined Him even earlier in 1955. I was then 7 years old.

I was born on January 3rd, 1948, Jesus birthday, in a cool looking hospital in Greenport, NY and lived until the age 4 in Cutchogue, about a mile from my grandparents potato farms.

God and metaphysical phenomena entered my life at a very young age, preparing me to find and work with the True Parents. I have been protected and I have been empowered in my activities by spiritual forces on high. I have traveled to the ends of the earth for my God, having worked in 23 different nations as a missionary. I have seen things that continue to amaze me.

My spiritual journey began when I was 4 years old. My mother told me that, while standing on the second step of the outside entrance to our basement, a strong wind blew the metal door shut over me. My father panicked, thinking I had been killed. Fearing the worst, he opened the door and found me standing, untouched, with a very bright spiritual light around my head. He thought, "There must be something unusual and religious concerning my son."

When I was 7 years old, during my Confirmation ceremony in the Catholic Church, I had a transforming experience. My view of reality changed at the very moment I heard the priest say that I was a soldier of God. It touched the core of my being as true. I was God's soldier! It was then I felt the calling to a quest that continues even to today  --  to build God's kingdom.

Around the age of 10, my spiritual senses became heightened and I started receiving much of the Divine Principle, the teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon. I received, through spiritual or telepathic means, ideas like: the building of "One Family Under God," beyond race, religion and cultures; that purity had been lost and needed to be regained; that it was our responsibility to build God's kingdom, not God's. Thinking back, it seems to me this should have been a natural occurrence because many people on the earth were also receiving these thoughts.

From 1958 on, Rev. Moon was appearing in many people's dreams across the world and his teachings were being broadcast from the spirit world by angels and spirit guides. Although I was raised in a small, white, Catholic town, I was consumed with the thought that all the races were my real brothers and sisters, all religions were part of God's plan, and that I had a world level mission. One time, I received a vision of an ideal city in the mountains of Asia. For about six years, I focused on building my "ideal world" in the center of a swamp lake near my home.

I carted lumber from a dump about a mile away and built a hut, a tower, birdhouses, lawn, and protective fencing -- all this from the muck and garbage of others. Most of my non-school time was focused on making my dream a reality. Even some friends caught my vision and helped me with the work whenever they could. I have come to understand that this was preparation for when I would become a missionary, years later and gather disciples for God.

In my early teen years, I delivered newspapers to both the poor and rich areas of my town. I believe my guardian angels used this time to prepare me for my life's calling. My father, who survived the depression years on a farm, always taught me the importance of working and saving all my money to pay my way through college and secure a lucrative job so I could have financial stability and happiness. God, however, had bigger plans for me.

One day, during my newspaper deliveries, I stopped by a poor black woman's home to get my weekly subscription pay. She invited me into her home. As I was waiting for her to get the money, spirit world told me to take notice of this woman's ear-to-ear smile, her kindness and her determined effort to gather up enough change to pay me. I also noticed that her home was in serious need of repair and she didn't have much food on her kitchen shelves.

Later, I knocked on the door of a very wealthy home to collect the weekly subscription pay, and a white man opened it with a grouchy frown on his face. In a rough voice he yelled, "I have no money. Come back next week!" and slammed the door in my face.

For years thereafter, my guiding spirits played these 2 scenes in my mind about how the poor are often so happy in spite of their poverty, and the rich are so unhappy, even though they are wealthy.

This was a very important lesson for my future mission and to counter my physical father's emphasis on economic security, especially since I ended up studying in college how to make, manage and invest money.

Also, during my youth, God showed me what "true love" was. I noticed how most "lovers" ended up in misery, in spite of having thought their love was special and different from everyone else's. At the age of 14, God showed me that I would have to go a different path to find my wife. He prepared me for the matching ceremony and Cain's course of being married to a bride of the Messiah. He revealed to me the logic that if my beloved fiancée wanted someone else who would make her happier and more fulfilled, I should let her go, preferring her happiness over mine.

In High School I was not really interested in girls but was really into sports: basketball, medium distant running and pole vaulting; my relay team did win medals. I mastered water skiing with one ski but just could not get the hang of barefoot skiing and broke a few ribs flipping end over end when stepping off onto water surfaces. I spent my summers fishing with my father, heavy into water sports and most summers working two jobs to save for college. One summer I even worked three jobs, getting up at 4 AM to prepare boats for renters, driving a truck during the day and busing tables in a local restaurant.

The best fishing times with my father was trolling in the evenings magnificent sunsets for bass, whipping bluefish with every cast of the pole into our boat because of us being surrounded by jumping schools of madly feeding fish and paddling a boat in total darkness on crystal still lagoons with a lantern in the front and spearing fish and eels we could see along the bottom.

My dad bought a 1948 army jeep to train me how to drive. We painted it canary yellow and with a baby blue top. I learned to drive bumping trees in the woods and doing spins on beaches. Once I went over a cliff with it because of driving too close but a force beyond seem to protect me for there was a giant rock in the side of the 50 foot bank that stopped the jeep.

My dad was a real good dad. His father died when he was 1 year old and his mother had to run a large farm and also take care of 9 children. She was one tough woman. She lived to be 101, and explained to me how she would have to massage her stiff limbs for two hours before she could work in her gardens during her elderly years and was famous for chasing two thieves out of her house and beating them with a broom at the age of 92.

My dad never had a father to model in raising our family. He lived a tough life growing up and worked very hard to carve out a living for us. He was very strong in discipline and this created in me a tough character. As Divine Principle shares, each successive generation should try to improve on the previous. I strive to be as good as and better than my father was. My mother is so special and really practices serving everyone, especially to my children she invests so much.

I grew up in a paradise on the end of Long Island and developed a deep love for nature. God often spoke to me in the beauty of his creation. Sometimes I seemed to feel the presence of Indians in spirit form paddling their canoes.

When I turned 17, I was appointed the president of the Catholic Youth Organization. I was quite serious in my faith and even considered becoming a priest. However, my eyes were opened from my naive understanding of religion and its leadership after I organized a fundraising event to earn funds to build a youth community center for the Catholic youth in my hometown. The local priest confiscated the funds and curtailed the project.

My future with the Catholic Church was further hindered two years later when I attended mass on a visit from college and found, when opening my eyes while standing in the loft above the congregation, that nearly one third of the congregation had their eyes open looking around during the prayer. I had assumed that all were in deep communion with God. I was wrong.

The summer before college I drove a Coca Cola truck. One day when I was just beginning the coke route, I got caught in a rainstorm. Unfamiliar with the dashboard and wiper button, I looked away from the road and bent down to look for the wiper button. Before I could think, something forced me to sit up and, as I rose, this force raised my arm and whipped the steering wheel to the right. As the truck swerved to the right, I then re-focused on the road ahead to find I had drifted into the oncoming traffic and was about to crash into 3 cars head on with the big truck I was driving. This was my first experience with the metaphysical world saving my life.

In my first week in college, I had a life-changing encounter with God. That first weekend I found that the movie, "To Sir With Love," was playing at the student center and I went to see it. In the movie, Sidney Poitier took a job teaching troubled students in an inner city school. He broke through to them when he did unusual things like taking them for outings instead of classroom studies and treated them as adults and by respecting them as equals. At the end of the movie, when a high paying offer came to him to teach in a white school, he rejected it and elected to continue at low wages helping the inner city children.

I started sobbing at that moment; tears flooded down my face and I left the room and hid outside the building. For over half an hour, I had a metaphysical experience where my spirit was outside of my body. I was watching my body cry out of happiness for another human sacrificing and helping their fellow humans when they did not have to. I recognized that the tears were not my tears, but were God's flowing through me. This was my first experience of "skin touch with God". This "skin touch" relationship has been repeated many times in my life.

In college, I pursued studies in pre-med to become a psychiatric doctor. However, when I learned mental doctors cure no one, just prescribe drugs to suppress the functioning of the brain, or apply electric shock to destroy part of the brain, I decided this was not the solution to serious mental problems. After dropping out of the pre-med program, spirit world led me to a small booklet called, "The Presence of Spirits in Madness" by Wilson Van Dusen. This booklet led me to investigate the reality of the "other worlds" or "earthbound ancestors'" impact on humans and concluded people mainly need friends and hugs to solve their emotional and mental problems. I switched majors to business and kept open my plans for a spiritual mission in life.

In my junior year, while driving home from a restaurant, I had a head on collision with another car that ran a stoplight. The steering wheel of my car broke my chest sternum, stopped my heart and I died. Later, in the ambulance, I came back to life. This experience gave me my wake up call and I had to repent for my lack of living for God's will. I admitted I had thrown my spiritual calling away and that God had given me a new life. This life now belonged to Him. I, therefore, told God that my life was His and whatever He desired, I would do it for the rest of my life. I lost interested in all my sports activity, cars and business studies. I was reborn and began searching to find my mission

During the summer of my junior year, I worked at a New Jersey shore French cuisine restaurant. I also worked on rebuilding my chest muscles torn and damaged from the accident by swimming all day in the ocean. At one point, I was confronted by the homosexual world at my apartment.

The restaurant manager where I worked had arranged for me to live in an apartment of his "friend". The afternoon after I moved in, I jumped into the pool in the backyard and immediately three men jumped in and swam toward me. I sensed what was happening and jumped onto the edge of the pool. I warned them if they came near me, they would be finished for I was adept at martial arts. Thereafter, I spent as little time as I could at that apartment because they left their doors open while engaging in their disgusting activity to attract others into their lifestyle.

At the end of that summer, God taught me another deep lesson. He moved me across America to Tijuana, Mexico, with a friend, as big shot American tourists. While searching for things to buy, I had my first challenge with my new calling. A woman beggar pulling an emaciated child blocked my path with an outstretched hand.

I saw in her eyes desperation, starvation, despair and a soul-touching plea for help. At that moment, my heart was transformed. At that moment, the suffering of people in the world became a vivid reality. At that moment, my ancestors began tormenting me to find a way to help the hopeless and the downtrodden.

In my senior year, as my graduation was approaching, I began to worry about what I was going to do with my life. How was I going to deal with humanity's needs the most effectively? One afternoon, while in a room with about 10 fellow business students, I heard a deep, loud voice say, "You must unite the world!" It sounded as a physical voice but must have been a spiritual voice for none of the others in the room heard this voice.

Upon hearing this, my world turned upside down for the third time as I went through another spiritual transformation. It was as if I had always known about my calling ever since I was a toddler, and I felt power and strength surge within me to fulfill this mission.

Three days later, I heard this loud voice again. It said I was to "unite the world by building an ideal city that would be an example for all humankind to live together in peace." Again no one around me appeared to hear what seemed to me a physically audible voice. After hearing this voice of God again, my entire being -- emotionally, mentally and spiritually -- became focused and I felt a strong determination to do something with my calling.

It was during this time that I got involved with the peace movement. In Albany this movement was started by naive students wanting peace but quickly became invaded by outside "organizers" that, when looking back, I realize were communist activists from another state. We shut down the NY State Thruway and I know my photo was taken by the government as I was in the front of the marching lines. Perhaps Heavenly Father was training me to make commitments, cut ties and take risks. The State University at Albany was shut down by the masses of students demonstrating and it was decided all of us would get pass or fail grades depending on our current course averages. I did not write the papers that were needed to graduate, but because of the peace movement taking over the University, I ended up graduating. My thoughts after graduating were consumed with plans to build this ideal city.

So many plans came into my mind, but what I saw as my biggest obstacle was finding the ideal people to live in this ideal city I was going to build. To start a foundation to build my assigned ideal city, I invested money from the auto accident lawsuit into fast earning stocks. I lined up a job through my cousin's influence, who had taught the Beatles how to golf, with his boss, whose business was building small cities. I also applied in an advanced Business Masters Program with the American Management Association. However, I became progressively overwhelmed by messages from the spirit world to travel to San Francisco to find the organization and people to work with to build this ideal city.

I finally dropped my personal strategies and went to San Francisco to find the people and out how to build this ideal city. I then spent a few weeks preparing to leave and started off to California in my Volkswagen van. There I was, a small hometown, mama's boy, dropping everything I knew to follow the guidance of the spirit world on a quest, my studies to become a psychiatrist would have labeled me as insane and many traditional religions as possessed.

After spending 40 days in San Francisco visiting various religious and new age groups, including living with scientologists for a week, I still did not find clear answers or the people to work with. I then traveled to Lake Tahoe and lined up a job as the floor manager of a restaurant in the evenings, and planned to become a ski bum during the days, intending to forsake my mission calling. Back in San Francisco, while waiting for my top of the line skis to arrive, I was sitting in the San Francisco University snack bar when Alice Fleisher asked if she could sit and talk. I nodded yes, but kept reading a book on spirituality until I heard her say that her group was building an ideal city in Northern California.

That caught my attention. I closed my book and immediately said, "Let us go!" Alice brought me to the "Unified Family" center. When I entered, I immediately felt the high spiritual atmosphere and saw that the sisters were in long flowing dresses with a bright glow of purity in their faces and light around their heads. I told them I was available for a one on one workshop. Mike Warder taught me over the weekend, and that was it -- I have since stayed with this family centered movement. One soul-stirring experience I had in that first workshop was when a sister taught me the Mission of Jesus. As she taught, she cried and cried. This caused me to cry and cry with her over the life Jesus never got to live and over his suffering course.

America and Pioneering Texas

My decision to live in the Unified Family center and join the Unification movement was made easier by a series of strange events.

Having lived for a week with the early members of the Scientology movement, I noticed that they were mostly intellectual people, into themselves and easily offended by others. This created a clear reference base to judge the Unified Family members. I perceived and valued the Unification movement's teaching that true love meant living for the sake of others. This was shown through the members' quality of heart and the way they related to each other.

Interestingly, the day before meeting the Unification movement, my van was vandalized and a German shepherd puppy I was emotionally attached to, most of my belongings, and especially a stereo system and collection of records, were stolen. The loss of my "worldly things" removed any blockage from my moving in and becoming active in the movement. Also, the van, whose engine I had personally rebuilt before leaving New York, only lasted in getting me across the country. After I parked it in front of the Bush Street center for the weekend workshop, it would not start again and had to be junked. The powers beyond this physical world seemed to be actively working to get me connected to the movement and made it nearly impossible for me to do anything else.

For about 10 days after moving into the center, I was caught up in the spirit. I walked the streets of San Francisco with heightened physical senses, or perhaps my spiritual senses were opened. I walked through the crowds singing at the top of my voice, oblivious of others' opinions of me. I could feel a layer of energy between my feet and the sidewalk as if I was not touching the ground. My body, most of the time, was a mass of tingling energy. When I touched things, I became one with their energy or vibration, and when I pulled my hand away energy would leap back to the object. The light in everything was ten times brighter than normal and displayed an intense beauty beyond the normal physical world.

About two weeks after moving in, I visited an evening prayer gathering at the "adult center" where older members were living. As we sang and prayed in a circle, the house's atmosphere changed into one identical to that of my aunt's home. Her home was over 200 years old and had always been very strange. As a child, I felt it was haunted. In the prayer meeting, I heard her husband, who was in the spirit world say that he was the one who led me across America to meet the Unification Movement. He had been very religious and a Catholic book salesman by profession.

I especially enjoyed the weekly Sunday events, which included morning service, followed by afternoon sports and a picnic lunch. The day ended with an evening banquet consisting of food from a different country, followed by music and dance entertainment. My spiritual mom, Alice, was one of the three sisters who performed weekly in lively new age violin music. We had every couple of weeks an "International Dinner Entertainment Evening" with many guests, food and native performing entertainers from different countries. We were truly an international family of joy.

Within a few weeks of joining the movement, I started witnessing and teaching DP and soon gained my first spiritual child, Donna Chong Davis. Donna turned out to be such a solid questor to build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, often putting my feet to the fire for spiritual growing and was one of the sister's who won a diamond ring from True Father for her accomplishments. When Papa-san Choi, our elder and Korean pioneering missionary, interviewed me and learned of my business studies and experience in the restaurant business, he assigned me the mission to start a large restaurant and, more immediately, to be the chef and coordinator of the next major dinner celebration for about 300 guests. Somehow, a positive, can-do attitude and maybe the spirit world's help, made me pull off a major dinner function with roasted sides of beef, Caesar salad and French deserts.

For the first few months in the Bay Area movement, I had the mission to sell and deliver the organic produce we grew on the farm of our Ideal City Project in Mendicino County. Although I was totally unfamiliar with the layout of roads and addresses, I quickly learned I had unique help in finding locations. I put aside my maps in frustrations and just listened to the voices and feelings that came into me. It was like Star Wars stuff -- listening to the force and letting go. I would get telepathic messages to turn there and the location I was searching for would be in front of me. This became a regular pattern the rest of my life -- listening to the messages coming from my ancestors and spirit guides and then being amazed by the results.

However, on starting the restaurant business, I came to understand something of the Korean nature. I waited a couple of months for Papa-san Choi to give me details on what to do and, when none came, I thought he was not serious about my starting up a restaurant for the movement. Only later did I learn the Korean way is to assign a mission and then expect the individual to "go for it" using their creativity and aggressive energy to pester the Korean leader with ideas and requests for support and money.

When I did not act on the restaurant business, I was assigned to be an intern for a Jewish millionaire, Mr. Jack Prager, who loved our movement. He took me under his wing and we traveled around the Bay area in his Mercedes Benzes and flew across America visiting his customers. I quickly digested his mentoring and with Mr. Prager's blessing and guidance convinced Papa-san to provide $35,000 to start up an import and marketing company. I used my mentor's business connections and to import gold leaf, hand-carved, museum-quality picture frames from Taiwan and high quality oil painting from Japan. I sold both products at wholesale in the Bay area and through out the western coast of the US. I also opened a retail supply store for San Francisco's artist community.

However, my business mission was not to last long for God had different plans for me. At the end of 1971, about a year after I joined the movement, Rev. Moon landed in America and spent seven days in the San Francisco center to inherit the American Korean Missionaries Foundations. He did this through an extensive 7-day DP workshop which President Young Whi Kim taught. The content was only of Chapter 1 but with such detail that have never heard since.

Most of the members of the San Francisco family did not attend the lectures because of being very sick with the flu, but I forced myself, in spite of a high fever, often coughing on the back of True Mother. At this time, even President Kim was extremely sick while he taught with sweat flowing down his face from fever. It seemed like he was going to topple over a few times. During these lectures I could see many spirits and angels flying about the room above us. At times, some even passed through my physical body, which caused my body to shake from the tingling of their energy. True Father, True Mother and Pres. Kim had very bright, colorful auras about their heads. I developed a direct connection of heart and mind to our True Parents starting at this workshop that only increased with the years.

After True Parents left and began their cross country tour of America I could no longer focus on my business mission in San Francisco. I was plagued by the spirit world all day telling me that I had to stop my business mission and work directly under True Father as a missionary. I appealed to Papa-san Choi to let me join True Father, but he refused. So, I reduced the wholesale/retail picture frame business in size and prepared Mike Runyon to take over. When True Father's American speaking tour reached San Francisco, I passed a note secretly to Col. Pak to hand True Father and went up to the brothers room to hide.

Almost immediately, True Father called for me. When I went down to the kitchen True Father looked at me with a very bright smile and said in English, "So, you want to be a missionary?" I nodded and he said, "Great!" I thus joined Rev. Moon as a direct disciple and was the first member of the San Francisco family to graduate from Papa-san's mentoring.

Soon after, I spent a week working with Olga Silva Kennedy preparing for the Berkeley speech. This very deep, pure, vertical sister gave me the only training I was to receive before doing my mission. She shared much about the spirit world that I had never known before, about her personal travels in the spirit world as a child to be with her departed grandmother, and about how she once decided not to return to the physical world again, only later to be convinced by her grandmother to return. When she did, she found her mother crying on the floor over her brief time of being physically dead.

A week after being accepted by True Father, I found myself in Houston, Texas, for state pioneering. Right when I left the bus station, as I was walking, I heard a person across the street shout out my name and yell, "Hey, Doroski! You bum! You machine! Get out of here!" Since I had never been in Texas before, I was startled. I looked at the person who spoke and saw that he was leaning against a pole and was drunk. Evil spirits had taken over his body. They were angry and cursing me for coming to Texas representing the Messiah and bringing a knowledge of love and truth to threaten their abode.

I chose to ignore this distraction and continued on my way. That evening I encountered another presence of evil which attacked me and tried to scare me away. I located an ex-priest and ex-nun who had married and who were recommended to me as potential supporters. They let me sleep in their apartment living room. At about 1 a.m., I woke up and found I was paralyzed. There was a black, swirling cloud with demonic forms above me filling the entire room. I felt the presence of real evil and danger. I prayed desperately and called out Jesus' and True Parents' names, silently, mentally within my mind for even my mouth would not work. As time passed, I was finally able to shout out Sun Myung Moon's name physically, until the dark forms left and I was able to move again. I did not sleep in this couple's apartment again.

After a few days of witnessing in Houston and explaining why I came and who I represented, many told me I should start in Austin because it was the spiritual center of Texas. After getting permission from my leader, I moved to Austin and rented a two-bedroom bungalow near the university. I got a job delivering newspapers on a bike I bought and then started a cleaning business for college-trashed apartments for a rental company.

The first day I went witnessing, I went into a Catholic youth center and asked a young lady swimming in the pool for directions to the campus. I explained how I had to come to Austin to share a new, deeper understanding of God's Will for humankind. She said that she, herself, would like to hear the lectures and aggressively sought a time for us to get together. She was MaryAnn Viscardi and she became my first member.

My first actions to pioneer Austin centered on prayer and a street witnessing condition. I made a 7 day condition to stand on a pillar overlooking the University's main campus walk-through connection to all college buildings. At noon many thousands of students would pass alongside the 12 foot high pillar I would be standing upon. I spoke 21 one minutes each day and I was fortunate that the Dean of Students call me in to his office on the 7th day after my condition was fulfilled, because he sternly warned me he would arrest me if I did this one more time and my determination was to even get arrested if necessary.

Actually before I had gained any members, I organized a campus club focusing on the spirit world and the new age. One student I had witnessed to agreed to give his name for me to use to form a campus organization and I found a left wing, liberal professor who agreed to sponsor just about any kind of a club. Now being legal on the campus, I printed up some posters about a meeting to learn about the spirit world and then organized the 12 guests into a weekly discussion group. We covered subjects such as telepathy, auras, astral projection, possession and spiritual growth. From this group the Texas movement gained a few more members.

I repeated three times over the course of 2 years the technique of holding a public meeting on the spirit world and then leading weekly discussion groups. Many spiritual children were gained through these discussion groups. My pattern was to bring up topics and have the participants share their views and personal experiences. Of course, I had the final say and through these meetings taught the core of Divine Principle that was relevant.

The third time I held these meetings, 120 students attended the opening public speech. All 120 filled out a registration form giving their personal experiences of the spirit world and books they read on it. Then I assigned each person to appropriate groups that met weekly. There were 10 groups of 12 students each. I would then guide, teach DP and then invite those who were ready to hear the complete DP lectures.

I made many fasting, witnessing, and prayer conditions to support this outreach method to gain my spiritual children. After two months of outreach, I had 5 spiritual children living in the center and the visiting itinerary worker, Nora Spurgin, was shocked because I had not reported gaining spiritual children. She then asked to hear my lectures, wanting to know how so many members were joining so quickly. I explained I did not know how to teach but was only reading Miss Kim's red book to the guests. She directed me to learn to teach or I would be replaced.

Beatriz Steeghs was one of the last spiritual children I gained this way. She attended a few of the spiritual discussion group meetings, learning DP until she was ready for more direct teaching. After teaching her the conclusion, I cried with her concerning the pains and persecution she would suffer by moving in. Beatrice was the leader of a Spanish campus club of over a 1,000 members. It was not easy for her to move into the center and separate from this leadership position. Beatriz has had a difficult course in her life of faith which has deepen her into one of our very special sisters.

A few months after Beatriz moved in, her friend from Chicago, Esteban Galvan, came to save her from what he assumed was a mistaken movement. However, Beatriz convinced him to hear the DP lectures before she would even talk to him. I held a workshop in a Texas forest just for him, and when Esteban appeared not to be listening to Chapter 1, I challenged him to shoot rough river rapids with me. After he went under twice and I pulled him out, he became very serious about listening to the lectures. And, as they say, the rest would be his story on how he became one of the strongest and most productive spiritual grandchildren of mine in America.

Another strategy I used was selling books on spirituality and utopias in the center of the campus main walkway. At least 1,000 students passed through at each change of classes. The selling of these books allowed me to see most of my spiritual children and contacts daily, developing a deep contact of heart.

Many other members were gained I sitting in the church center in prayer responded to the spirit world telling me to leave the house and go to the campus. When I went there, I would walk up to the person I was led to and told them I had been directed to meet someone and could they be that person. They then responded by coming over to study the DP and joining. Laura Thornton Hampton joined through this method of guidance from the spirit world.

Mission in America

Because in Texas we gained the most members of all the pioneering states that first year, I was recognized by True Father as a capable leader, at a 50 state leaders meeting. At that time, Susan Fefferman informed me that she saw many huge Polish ancestors of mine surrounding me and warned me to be careful of their powerful influences. True Father awarded our success in Texas, not with praise, but with a challenge and increased responsibility.

He said, "Form a regional witnessing team out of your gained members." All other regions across America were provided members from headquarters to form their regional teams.

In the first part of 1974, the Texas movement, now around 18 members traveled to Washington, DC, to participate in the 3-day fast gathering on the Capitol steps to ask our nation to "forgive, love and unite" in support of President Richard Nixon and of course for him to repent. When the event was over, we drove to Long Island, NY, to visit my family in Greenport.

On the way back to Texas we visited the candle factory in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Later, I learned while I was walking back to our van, my future wife, Nanette Semha, was babysitting on the 2nd floor of the farm house and she heard a loud voice from the spirit world tell her to go look out the window. She obeyed and when she saw me walking, the voice told her, "There goes your future husband." She put this experience in the back of her mind, forgetting it until after we were matched in Korea by Sun Myung Moon. It appears Heavenly Father had already matched Nanette and me more than two years before Rev. Moon matched us.

In the second year of pioneering Texas, we bought a 28- room center that had been a sorority house a couple of blocks from the campus. We were able to do this through all the members' great effort in fundraising with candles and granariums. We planted flowers in the front of the center, a corner house, and this stopped so many students to enjoy the beauty. One point of interest was that I ended up locking most of the rooms and had only one room for brothers and one room for sisters. I did this because our unity started to erode due to each member having their own room.

In 1974, our major project was traveling to Dallas, Texas, to open a center and prepare for True Father's American speaking tour. I took a team of 10 members and we rented a house in an exclusive neighborhood. We quickly found out why this house in such an exclusive location was available for rent.

When we walked through the house, all the members felt "cold spots" in three different 2-foot square areas. A few of the members were spiritually open and would not sleep in the house that first night. The five of us that did had violent, evil dreams all night long.

Dr. Sheftick's team arrived the next day with about 25 members. Within a few hours many were arrested and the vans confiscated. We were in the wrong place, at the wrong time. When we were released, we retreated to a seminary on the outskirts of Dallas in which we worked from in preparation for True Father's speech.

When the national level advance team arrived, the leader asked who the state leader was. When I raised my hand, he told me I was fired, along with my assistant state leader. The humiliation and treatment I received was very challenging to my life of faith. If it had not been for Daikon Onuki taking me out for a meal and buying me a suit, I might have left Dallas.

When True Father arrived a few days later and learned that first night I had been fired, he demanded I immediately be called to join the evening meal. He then chastised the regional and national leaders for their treatment of me and said they had been wrong. He reinstated me. I felt so deeply touched by the fact that Sun Myung Moon was so open spiritually and connected to Heavenly Father that he could know and see through "false" accusations. Of course, this knowing of my innocence and my inner spiritual world by True Father bound my heart and loyalty ever so tightly to him as my caring, wise, personal father. He cemented his fatherly care later the next day when I was riding in a car with him sight-seeing and he reached back to lock my car door for my protection.

After pioneering Texas for two years, I was transferred to Belvedere to study under Dr. David Kim. I arrived around noon and promptly went to the food line, got a plate of food and looked for a place to sit. I noticed one particular sister and walked over to her, strangely introducing myself by asking her if she had "spiritual powers." Little did I know that she would be my future wife, Nanette. She responded that, yes, she had done automatic handwriting in her past and received many messages that were proven to be correct.

She became my special mentor, having been nearly two years longer in the movement than me. She answered many of my questions, encouraged me in my life of faith, and always seemed to be the sister in the mother position on the fundraising teams I led. But frankly, she would have been the last person I would have thought to get married to because I was a person heavy into sports having been a pole-vaulter and ribbon winner for track in high school. My thought was I needed a wife who was athletic and could go snow skiing in the mountains with me. I used to laugh when she did her morning exercises and I found out that she had failed gym in school a few times.

Well, the spirit world progressively told me she would make a good wife for me and I, in turn, told these beings they were wrong. Over time, however, they convinced me that she had very special qualities that would be good for my wife to have. After being in training under Rev. David Kim for about 8 months, Nanette and I found ourselves leading a team in Albany, NY. After I had settled the team in their rooms, I went and brought dinner for them. When I brought the food to Nanette and set it on a table, I went into a spiritual state of infinite peace, which progressed into a feeling that I was in the presence of my wife who I had already been married to for a great many years. After some time, I awoke from this euphoria and realized I was in the room of a sister and quickly left. I kept this experience to myself.

The next day, I received a call from Belvedere that Nanette and I needed to quickly fill out application forms for the matching that would be held in Korea soon. We helped each other fill the forms, encouraged each other to smile for instant photos at Kmart, and we mailed the forms in the same envelope. Shortly after, we found ourselves on an airplane bound for Korea.

I was in a confused state of mind whether I should tell True Father that God and the spirit world had been telling me Nanette should be my wife, but that she was not my personal choice. Later, in the matching room, when it was soon to be my turn to be matched, I kept raising my hand halfway up and then down repeatedly, not sure what to do. David Kim saw this and asked me what was up, and then True Father questioned what was happening. I explained what I had been receiving and that it was not my will. True Father looked back and forth at Nanette and me three times and then said, "Very busy" regarding Nanette's character, and then said, "Good match."

We went into the matching candidates' conference room and she asked me just one question, "Can you John, promise me you will never leave the movement?" I answered, "Yes!" Well, later, after the blessing ceremony I learned from Nanette that she had heard the voice two years earlier in Maryland saying, "There goes your future husband." She had forgotten it until just then. From that point, we became as two lovebirds deep in romantic, mystical love, although we were the opposite in so many ways. She would never consider going fishing and putting a worm on a hook. She had an extreme fear of water where my entire childhood centered around the ocean. I would have never considered wasting my time in an art museum, which is where her teenage years centered around.

When we returned to America, we visited my aunt whose husband had guided me to meet the Unification Movement from the spirit world. While having a grand dinner at her home, she shared that she had a dream while we were in Korea getting married. In this dream she was cooking a cake for the "Marriage Supper of the Lamb", only it was a gigantic cake for hundreds of couples getting married at the same time. She called my mother and found out about our being in Korea for the, mass wedding. My aunt did not know at the time I was getting married or of our movement's mass wedding ceremonies.

All of the 1800 American couples that were going out as foreign missionaries as part of the blessing condition spent 120 days in Barrytown being mentored by True Father each morning and the rest of the day by Rev. Sudo. I was just in heaven receiving love from both True Father and my love mate until near the end of the 120 day workshop when it was announced a workshop photo would be taken.

Frankly, I did not understand many things True Father was explaining and the meaning of brothers being in the Archangel position before our three day ceremony. For the workshop photo, we were asked to gather with our team. I did not want to do this. I wanted my picture with my beloved wife standing beside me so when I was alone in the foreign mission I could see a visualization of our love. Nanette united with the direction to join with one's team for the photo and my pleas were rejected. I got filled with the Archangel's feeling of rejection, loneliness and selfishness.

After the photo session, I ran into the surrounding woods, filled with rage, hitting trees and bushes. I was basically possessed, and so began my course of the archangel's feelings I would face and its restoration. To my comfort, at the end of the missionary training a group picture was taken of those who graduated the workshop and who would be going out as missionaries. It was then I was able to get that historic photo beside my blessed wife.

When we drew lots for the country we would pioneer, I was devastated when Nanette and I drew countries on the complete opposite sides of the earth; Nanette picked the Bahamas and I picked the Philippines. Because of this, I used "connections" to re-draw my country out of the ones not taken yet, and God pulled a ""Jonah and the whale" restoration providence on me. I was put into the whale's belly for reflection and repentance, or should I say the fire and desert of Kuwait, until I could change my archangelic-hardened heart and seek only Heavenly Father's Will rather than receiving love from my wife. I then found books to read on Islam, Arabs and Kuwait, and prepared for the worst, having acquired a stereotypical Judeo/Christian view about the mission country I was headed to.

After graduating, we were responsible to make our way to our mission countries. Nanette and I worked on a team together to earn money for airfare. This time, my aunt hosted our team in her home as we fundraised on Long Island, New York. She was a great champion in taking a parental role to us future missionaries. She cooked for us, wrapped our flowers, picked up and shifted fundraisers' locations and took John Bowles to the hospital when he got injured. We quickly earned our airfare and took off to our counties. I left my adopted spiritual mom and bride, to be tempered in the fires of standing alone for Heavenly Father's "new truth" and True Father's providence.

Mission in Kuwait

I arrived in Kuwait City on a Saturday with just one immediate problem on my mind -- where could I find a bathroom with toilet paper? They used a different system, which had a bowl with shooting water you stood over. I ran around looking for help, but there was one major problem -- no one spoke English. An hour later, my search ended at a Sheraton Hotel and, in the process, I located a Catholic Cathedral and a smaller Protestant Church.

My first task was to find employment for I only had a three-day tourist visa and, as an American, would have to leave on Tuesday. I went to both churches the next day and met a German businessman who needed someone to manage his photographic processing laboratory. On Monday, he took me to change my tourist visa to a work visa, which normally could not be accomplished without leaving the country. However, because of his "connections," it was a simple task. It appeared God had already been preparing my path and all I needed to do was be sensitive or aware of His guidance.

Over the next 3 months this locally famous businessman took me around to all his business contacts in the mornings. In the afternoons, I ran his laboratory, having studied photo processing in high school. This was basically my schedule from early morning until 9 p.m., six days a week with a few hours break in mid-afternoon for the hot climate's midday siesta.

This was so cool! Heavenly Father had arranged a way I could stay in the country, get paid, do what I enjoyed, be introduced by this "John the Baptist" to so many English-speaking Kuwaitis, and get a geographic and cultural understanding from his 15-year foundation there. The major drawback was my health, for I quickly developed stomach problems due to following a Kuwaiti custom of drinking a small cup of Arabian tea and coffee at each business visit before talk could begin. I quickly learned that Arabs in Kuwait apply customs and etiquette before business at all levels of their society.

Once I secured my presence in the Kuwait by getting a work visa, I then searched until I found my fellow Japanese and German missionaries. My fellow German missionary found a job in the desert driving a tractor and the Japanese missionary, Harunobu, was able to obtain an extended tourist visa. My German brother was only about 20 years old and 1 year in the movement, a bit naive with a strong will and determination.

He started witnessing on the streets of Kuwait within a few weeks of his arrival and within a couple of months got himself arrested and deported. My fellow Japanese missionary spent most of his time in our apartment in relative safety praying and studying English, Arabic and Islam.

Kuwait City was actually a very beautiful city, with very wide roads and flowers in constant bloom on the sides and middle divides of the roads. Every morning, "water trucks" from the national desalting plant sprayed the landscaped plants with desalted water from the Arabian Sea. I did take a boat trip in the first months to Failaka Island to learn about Kuwait's history and visit the Kings Palace from a mere 150 years earlier, now a museum. I was shocked to see the size of his bedroom. It was much smaller than most bathrooms in America. The reality that even the poor in the western world are so much more affluent than the wealthiest humans on earth just a few hundred years ago was a lesson I was to learn repeatedly over the coming years.

One blessing this German businessman gave to me was my introduction to the National Minister of Religious Affairs. When this very holy man shook my hand, I lost awareness of the physical realm for a moment, experiencing our hands and arms becoming one as his energy poured into my hand. I noticed on his forehead a very thick calloused spot from bowing his head to the ground so many times throughout his life. He gave me a beautiful copy of the Quran, which he signed with a welcoming greeting to his country.

I immediately started meeting good contacts in the western church communities. By the end of the second month, I had concluded teaching the DP to an American teacher. We then began a 40-day prayer condition together for her to understand the responsibility of having heard the conclusion and of True Father being the Messiah. About 30 days into our condition, since there was no way to meet publicly, we were in her apartment praying. While praying, we were both humbled by a brilliant light appearing in the corner ceiling of the room. It stayed for the rest of our prayer and we both could feel intelligence within the pulsating light and concluded it was an angel. Two of her fellow teachers also heard conclusion and participated in our weekly evening dinner parties a few times.

Although this teacher was not able to actively participate with our mission in Kuwait and returned a few months later to America, I learned through her about an English teaching job at a British school. I then switched employment so I would have time free to do my mission since teaching required only a few hours in the evenings.

This new job used a specialized teaching method and was a real boost to my self-esteem, being alone in a difficult foreign mission, especially since I had scored poorly in English courses during my school years. I acquired a credible appearance for witnessing. Also, I was able to network with Kuwaiti citizens and students by presenting that I was researching for a book I wanted to write on the common ideas between Islam and Christianity.

One day, while rushing around in my tiny car -- smaller than the old mini Volkswagen cars -- what I had feared, happened. My car was so small a driver speeding in a big Arab car didn't see my car and moved into my lane. His car crashed into my driver's side doors and pushed my car sideways into the high roadside curb. My mini's wheels were shorter than the curb and should have been snapped off, but somehow the forward momentum changed and I just floated sideways up and over the curb onto the grass center divider and came to a stop. I got out to inspect the damage and view the expected broken wheels to find no traces of any damage. I was in awe to know some kind of metaphysical energy could surround my car and keep me from being hurt after the impact from a monster of a Kuwaiti car. God revealed he was protecting me.

By the fourth month, I made so many contacts from the 400,000 foreign nationals working in Kuwait. I started a Thursday night dinner, education and entertainment program in our apartment. I would drive my Austin Mini Minor British car around picking up contacts and dropping them off at the apartment with the first group being assigned to finishing various food preparations for dinner. After eating, we would start with meditation and prayer. I then taught a short section of DP and then concluded the evening with the game hang-mans-noose using DP ideas for the words to be guessed. At times, I had as many as 20 men crammed into our small one-bedroom apartment's sitting area.

One Sunday afternoon, I got an idea to go fishing near the picturesque water towers in Kuwait City. I brought a blow up plastic raft, a fishing pole, rope and bait, and anchored myself about 100 feet off shore. Very quickly, I was hauling in a large, fighting fish that kept pulling my line out again and swimming under my plastic platform. Finally, I got my fish to the top and freaked out. A large shark was hooked and its top fin was about to cut my plastic boat to shreds. I let the line out and paddled to shore and won the battle when I landed this big fish on the beach. You can bet I never went fishing in my plastic boat again!

Another method of outreach was meeting the foreigners attending the large Catholic cathedral. It was there that I met up with a secret Christian group that did not have their own church building. They were mainly of Indian nationality. The next Sunday, I followed their directions into the desert and drove quite a while until I found them meeting in a large group behind a hill. We held a service there and I sang our Holy Song, "The Lord Is One." I then gave a lecture combining the Last Days and the Second Coming. I did not get involved with them after that meeting because I had a spiritual feeling that they were being watched.

I attended two classes at Kuwait University to learn Arabic, but after staring at these strange symbols and hearing hard to pronounce deep throat sounds, I gave up on the classroom type lessons. I decided to teach myself, creating a system similar to what I was using to teach English. I wrote a list of key words and simple expressions, found various Arabs who were willing to pronounce the words, and I then wrote the words phonetically in English. After this, I spent a lot of time talking with Arabs using my simple, broken Arabic and learned by trial and error. They enjoyed my broken Arabic and I could quickly understand what they meant, perhaps some of my understanding coming telepathically.

It was about a 15-minute walk from my apartment to my workplace. While walking this distance, I began experiencing intense feelings of loneliness and heartbreak, many days with tears flowing down my face. It even became so strong one time that I walked over to a seaside wall and, as I was looking into the Arabian Sea, had thoughts telling me to end my suffering by jumping into the deep water. I was in some kind of a trance for a moment. When I came out of it, I jumped back realizing what I was thinking. Shortly after this experience, I spiritually received a message that these were not my feelings. They were the feelings of nearly 500,000 foreign men who had left their families to work in Kuwait for a few years to make money to bring back home. Their heartbreak was due to the sacrifice of being away from their loved ones.

From this and later experiences in other countries, I came to realize that each nation of the world, and even areas within nations, have collective metaphysical feelings of the people living there that visitors can sense and think are their own. In the Divine Principle, this is partly explained in the section of "collective sin." I was able to develop this metaphysical, telepathic sense of knowing others' feelings to understand the people around me and I was, at times, even able to read their minds.