The Words of the Heller Family
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The Words of the Heller Family |
Isn’t loving people so exhilarating? Consistently having your heart stretched out and open all the time? Sometimes it is such a struggle to love people. But if you think about it, love is the most exciting thing in the world! Love is what makes the heart move. If we all knew how to love people perfectly and we understood each other all the time, then our lives would be so and boring! That is why I am excited to share with you some of the wonderful but challenging experiences I have had as a team leader.
It all started with a talk that I had with my wonderful, amazing, cute and hard-working Japanese mamma on one Sunday evening. We were sharing about the difficulties that we were facing within our lives. I was so amazed in the confidence she has in God and in the confidence she has in this person’s original mind to breakthrough in their difficulties; when I gave up on that person a long time ago. It was there at that moment I understood the role of a parent. A parent is someone that always believes in the God given potential that has been placed within each one of us. No matter how far a child may stray from the parent, the parent will always believe that the child will come back home. Even when the darkest of thoughts and emotions surface within the parent, a true parent will walk through hell to believe in their children.
Coming into super challenge I was sure of two things. 1) God and True family loves me and trusts me to take care of God’s children, and 2) I wanted to become someone who could always uplift and love people in every situation. When I think about the people who love me, or just love in general- the first thing that comes to my mind are the people that believe in me all the time, especially during those times where I cannot believe in myself. I wanted to be that somebody for someone else!
I think that there are 5 different ways that people feel love.
1) Touch!
2) Time well spent!
3) Gifts!
4) Service!
5) Words of encouragement!
The 2 ways I wanted to show my love to my members was through acts of service and words of encouragement.
In life, we always have a goal that we are striving for, whether we know it or not. Whether it may be sports, relationships, love, and especially fundraising, there is always an ideal to strive for. Let me say that again! “I-DEAL!” like In Jin Nim always says.” I deal with my situation ok?” Haha I love it. Anyway like I was saying, there is always going to be some one that you are striving to become like. For some people it may be King LEONITIS from 300 or it may be the hit sensation Hanna Montana. But for me I really want to embody different characteristics that I love about True Father, aka TERMINATOR. He is an unstoppable walking legend.
I want to push myself to connect to True Fathers course in this super challenge condition, especially connect to True Father’s life in Heung Nam prison. I committed myself to set a standard that I know I would have liked to have as an example, but something that I know was out of my comfort zone.
The action steps I committed to were waking up forty five minutes early, stretching and going out on a 30 minute morning blitz, reading True Father’s autobiography during wash up time, and doing bookkeeping every night- so I have more time to fundraise. I knew that waking up early and doing book keeping everyday so I could fundraise more was not going to be easy. But I knew that through this example my brothers will never have a satisfied heart, knowing that there is always more that you can do.
Through the super challenge I could see the fruits of my investment start to pay off, every morning blitz I was able to connect to True Father on a different level. Whenever I went out I would have to run a long time to find people because there are not so many people out at 5 in the morning. But because I was pushing myself and setting conditions to connect with God and True Parents, I couldn’t wait to go back into the van and share about my run. And after a while I could see a desire to connect to God and True Parents more within the heart of my members. And that is something that cannot be replaced by anything else in the world.
I always try to point my heart in the direction of love, and if it is not pointed in that direction, then I make sure that I put my pure heart and sincerity to turn my heart in the direction of love, the direction of God. My members feel a lot of love when I go out and serve God and serve the team when I fundraise. So I try my best to go out every second that I can and not make any excuses (because it is so easy to make excuses, especially being a team leader now.) My members’ desire to build their relationship with God, True Parents, friends, and just people in general has grown so much since the beginning of the condition because they can clearly see someone else fighting really hard to build a relationship with God through fundraising and STF. They have no room to complain to me also because they know how much effort I am putting in. And that helps a lot! Sweet! Haha.
My goal was to be an example that the brothers can relate to. Because it is not always easy to relate to God and True Parents, I wanted to be a bridge to build their relationship with God and True Family. I could only do that because I HAVE a desire and I have a focus to build a relationship with them. There are so many experiences and stories I want to share about but that would make this testimony super long and super boring.
The most important thing is to lead by example. Set the bar high for your members and after a while, after they go through intense struggle and feel like they are going to die, they will break through. We all just have to make sure our heart is towards True Parents and Love. And when we give love, God has no choice but resonate with you and your team. Setting an example I think is one of the greatest ways to show love, because if you set the standard high then you leave room for people to chase after you and become great also.
I just want to take this time to thank In Jin nuna / Nim! She is the best because she is that light for me when it gets a little tough. She has shown us all that she loves and believes in us, more than we love and believe in ourselves! All those warm wonderful memories at Lucky Strike and on the balcony of New Yorker on July 4th 2009 keep me going when the times get tough. Thank you so much True Parents for sacrificing so much for us, I will never doubt the love that you have for us, because it is so great. Thank you Group leaders for sacrificing so much of your time to help us and guide us to become people of greater character and people that can be trusted by God. I cannot thank you enough! Thank You all the Brothers and sister out on the frontline! There is not a day where I do not think of you guys and all the inside jokes that we have. I cannot wait to bring victory at the end of this super challenge! We just have to take it one step at a time. I cannot imagine the joy we are bringing to True Parents and our Heavenly parent! Let’s finish this Super Challenge strong with Love in our hearts! MANSEI I LOVE AND MISS YOU GUYS SO MUCH!
“When setting your goal in the beginning, pledge yourself to a high standard: don’t allow yourself even the least bit of private desire.” -- Great Uncle Yun Guk