The Words of the Thomas Family

1st and 2nd condition FR - STF Europe

Seijin Thomas
February 1, 2006

For these two conditions on STF I have gained a lot. Before STF I was not involved in church activities so FR was my first taste of this kind of work. My reason to come to STF was to try and develop myself to have a closer relationship with God, TPs and then all people. So this is my year goal for STF, to really connect in heart to everyone. My first condition goal was to love God through the people. I was really focused on trying to love people unconditionally, but it was not going so well. At the start of the condition, FR was a struggle, everyday having to go out and never feeling a great sense of accomplishment. The first day I felt up for it as it was something new, but after a while it became so hard. It soon came to the point where I started to ask myself what was wrong with myself. But then before I could figure it out we had to go and attend TPs speaking tour. I was happy for the break and excited to see True Father for the first time. Our team attended 5 events and all were amazing, especially the first.

Being so close to Father and even guarding his room overnight was such a great experience I could really appreciate, from a direct perspective, True Father’s work and continuous effort and investment. I hoped I could always appreciate TPs while attending them but I felt I should have concentrated and prepared more. I felt they have given me so many blessings and I could gain so much; still from this time I was very inspired. So back to FR, after an amazingly, wonderful and busy experience. After there were a lot of changes in my team. At first I wasn’t so happy about my team but still felt it was something I had to overcome. It was because only two team members were around my age and one was a sister. So then I thought it would be hard to relate to people. But after attending TPs we came to connect as a team who would support each other well. I was very happy that I could be together with so many different types of people and adapt to love them all. Our team also traveled a lot, staying in 8 different countries over the 2 conditions. I felt I could practice being unchanging through these changing situations. In FR I could realize that I wasn’t really connecting with people. I would say I loved them but it wasn’t 100% true, there were always doubts. I felt I was giving all I had in Denmark while FR, but no result was coming, it was very hard. I was struggling within myself. So the first condition was hard. Some days I would do well when I set goals to never give up and push myself remembering the famous STF saying that investment is never lost. So days like this I would do really poor in the morning and then get an amazing crush out run after lunch. It happened a lot. I felt I had to invest and fight for every penny, but I never gave up. I felt I could embrace this character within myself, which was I felt the most important point I have learned from the first condition. The second condition in Norway was a great experience. It was so beautiful, with the glistening snow, mountains and sunsets, skies… I enjoyed FR a lot because of this. But the start was so hard. I would go out trying to pur out all of my heart and get so little at the end. For days this happened, where I gave my all and received nothing. So many rejections after I invested so much in focus and prayer but to no effect. So during a run where for 3 hours in the morning I got nothing, whatsoever, I stopped and thought, talking to God. I took 10 minutes recompose myself to FR and STF and even though I questioned so many times why. Then I had an experience where an old man and woman both gave me a donation while gardening in their front yard.

They reached down to offer me this and I felt TPs love so much. Then after the worst external result for one run, I went back out not even thinking about my external goal but just trying to be determined, then so many people bought. As I found myself singing and speaking to God, so many great experiences happened and I had the best result for a run this time. At the end of the day, the two runs were so different, it was amazing. I feel I could gain so much so far from STF but I am still working on my year goal to build my relationships. I could overcome a lot during this time to become more stable at the end. It was a great experience. Challenging, but extremely rewarding if you just focus, if you are giving 100% of your effort and not on the result and then if you can do this results are no longer most important but you will see a development in yourself.

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