The Words of the Takigawa Family
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The Words of the Takigawa Family |
Sun
Myung Moon May 5, 2011
I joined the church on November 8th 1975 in Paris.
To guide me in my first spiritual steps was one sister called Josiane. This sister didn't have a high academic education level but I think she had a PHD in spiritual matters.
None of my questions were too difficult for her to answer and if she could not answer immediately she would study the Divine Principle or True Father's speech to quench my spiritual thirst. She taught me a lot about True Father's life and about the spiritual world.
Among the things she taught me, two struck me and have remained in my heart ever since.
The first one is that the number one important thing in our life is TO KNOW GOD and the second most important thing is TO KNOW SATAN.
The second thing is that she told me that True Father did not worry about anything except how to make conditions to advance the Providence.
It is said that the education of a child during the first 3 years of his life will determine that person's future. In a way, the education I received during the first 3 years and perhaps the first 3 months of my church life have been most essential for the rest of my spiritual life.
Today I want to share with you some of my experiences making conditions which we used to call "indemnity conditions" and we now call "Jeong Seong conditions"
For me 3 points are very important in making conditions:
One is the SINCERITY of the heart with which you make a condition.(kanji seong). This Chinese character is divided into 2 parts, one which means "the word" and another one which means "to become". In other words, sincerity (seong or sei in Japanese) means to live according to the word which is exactly what our ancestors Adam and Eve didn't do!
Another point is the STEADFASTNESS in fulfilling the condition whatever situation you are in.
Finally, setting a CLEAR GOAL to the condition as well as a CLEAR TIME-PERIOD whether 3 days, 7 days, 21 days and so on.
About 2 to 3 weeks after joining the church I decided to start my first condition.
My original desire was to overcome my addiction to chocolate and sweet things in general as a way to unite my mind and body and so, after reporting to my central figure, I started a 40-day condition of not eating sweet things such as cakes, candies and chocolate. After a few days, though, I felt that doing this condition just for the sake of uniting my mind and body was not good enough as a goal and I decided to offer this condition for the sake of one more medical student to join the church since we were already 2 in our church in France.
As a matter of fact, during this 40-day condition, 3 days were particularly difficult.
The first one was when the church held a welcome party for the members of the Global Team upon their return to Europe from America, Korea and Japan. There were so many goodies passed around on that day! Nevertheless, I endured.
More difficult were Christmas Day and New Year Day (actually when I set up my condition, I didn't realize that it included these 2 festive days). For these 2 celebrations, I went back home and I had to face the discontent of my family, particularly of my mother when I refused to eat the traditional Christmas and New Year cakes. Everybody agreed that my refusing to eat these delicacies were an obvious sign that I had been brainwashed! Nevertheless I didn't give in to their criticism and remained faithful to my promise to God.
On January the 4th, I completed successfully my first condition only to find out that a 4th year medical university student had just joined in an another city, Grenoble.
Later on, when I finally met Jean-Pierre, I discovered that his spiritual father was a brother from Sri Lanka from the Global Team who had just returned to France.
Jean-Pierre participated in his first workshop on Christmas Day and joined on New Year Day which we call God's Day in our church. When I heard his testimony, I was totally shocked and even though I believe that my condition alone was not the reason why he joined, I felt deep in my heart that I has helped him in joining.
The second condition I made was to read the book "Victory over Communism, Critic and Counterproposal" over a certain period of time. While I was doing this condition, I was living in the CARP center with the other 2 medical students and a brother from Polytechnic School(the most famous school for engineers in France), our brother Didier who is with us to-day. I used to do my condition at night but that particular sister who was living with me used to go to bed quite early and would almost got possessed when I was doing my condition even though I was in a different room and was not making any noise. Again, I convinced her to let me do my condition as I had made my promise to God to read this book.
I do not remember exactly what was the purpose of my condition (I guess I wanted to be able to witness to people with a communist background) but I remember that after finishing my condition I was able, after quite a hot discussion with one of the doctors I was working with (a Marxist) to sell him one of our magazines, the New Hope Magazine. This particular issue was dedicated to the topic of psychiatry. After listening to all his criticism about God and religion, I confronted him with the fact that Marxism was not going to help him sort out his most intimate problems (he was actually undergoing a cure of psychoanalysis).
Later on, he visited our center with his wife and confessed an experience he had had when his first son was very young. He has received a phone call from the hospital that his son was between life and death and that he should go there immediately. After entering his car, he, who denied God, found himself throwing his head inside his hands and praying, asking God to save his child. Miraculously, when he arrived at the hospital he was told by the hospital staff that his son had suddenly recovered and was now out of danger! I had lots of hope for him to study the Divine Principle, unfortunately, shortly after his visit to our center, his wife who was still young and was taking contraceptive pill had a stroke and was hospitalized with severe symptoms.
A year later, our National Leader, Mr. [Henri] Blanchard, asked everybody to make a condition to repeat 120 times-a-day "Heavenly Father, I promise to bring one spiritual child per month for 3 months" in order to make a breakthrough in our witnessing results.
I could not unite with this condition because I felt unable to repeat the same sentence like a robot and as I was preparing to go to Korea to join an international medical team made of Japanese, Korean and French doctors and nurses during the summer time, I imagined that by the time we came back to France, this condition would be over. To my surprise, when we returned to France, Mr. Blanchard expressed his request once again. This time, I felt that I could not escape and I started this condition. I made a list of 40 contacts and decided to offer 3 times-a-day the condition of repeating these words: "Heavenly Father I want to bring one spiritual child per month for 3 months" while thinking about these 40 contacts. I think I did this condition for 3 or 4 months. Surprisingly, at the end of my condition, I got 2 spiritual children (not 3 unfortunately) who joined on God's Day.
After the blessing and, especially, after getting children, I do not remember setting so many conditions as I was very busy and tired. I did do some prayer conditions here and there.
Around the year 2000, I got confronted with the pain of watching our second child and first daughter going through a very rough adolescence. At that time, we were in Korea and she was struggling with very poor grades at school (so did her other 3 siblings) but, in her case she experienced some kind of loss of confidence (and perhaps depression) and was involved in several delinquency incidents. Finally, I had to send her back to Japan but, unfortunately, she didn't get any better. Around that time, I received the title of kwonsanim (title given to church elder sisters) by our local pastor and as such, I was approached by another kwonsanim who asked me if I would accept to join in a bowing condition for the True Family (one bow per member of the True Family, at that time 54 bows) plus a small daily financial condition. At that time, because of my daughter's situation, I could not sleep well and eat well. Even if I managed to fall asleep, if ever I woke up at 3 or 4 am, I was unable to go back to sleep. I cried so much and didn't know what to do.
However, when I started this condition, I came to realize the heart of True Parents who have suffered so much, watching their beautiful children being attacked over and over again by Satan. One time, True Father said that even if Satan would take all of his children he would never give up on the road of restoration. Thinking of True Parents' hardships, I felt strongly that I should get myself together and offer my daughter as a casualty in the war against evil and in the building of God's Kingdom. I did this condition for a year (9 times 40 days). By the time I finished, the pain was still there but I determined to go on.
A few years later, in 2004, our Peace Ambassadors team in Seoul witnessed to a young French diplomat. While the French Ambassador was absent and, as his representative, he participated in one of our church conferences in Seoul. Soon after hearing True Father's speech about true love and true family, he asked us, right away to find him a spouse. He specifically asked for a Japanese spouse as he could speak Japanese. I was asked to take care of his education and, despite his busy schedule, I managed with the help of another sister to give him the basic education and preparation for the blessing. It was very difficult to educate him because some members, among our team, wanted him to become a Moonie but, because he was a freshman in the realm of diplomacy, the last thing he wanted was to be on the spot line. At that time, True Father had asked some of the second generation girls to enter the Pure Love Department at Sun Moon University and to be ready to be blessed with first generation men such as sons of kings and diplomats. When I asked for our young diplomat to be blessed to one of these Pure Love girls, I was told by our team leader, an elderly Korean brother, that this diplomat was too old (he was 33 at that time).
We made his application for the blessing and gave it to Reverend Kwak's secretary but the file was lost among many other files. I felt totally desperate and I started a 40-day condition which would be followed by 2 more 40-day conditions with the purpose of finding his spouse (one condition was to read the Divine Principle in French, another one was a bowing condition and the last one was a prayer condition). Amazingly, after the first condition ended on the 39th day exactly), I was able to meet Ms. Erikawa in America and introduced this young diplomat's case to her.
She listened carefully and promised to meet him during her next stay in Korea. Sure enough, on the 39th day of my second 40-day condition, she could meet him and interview him and then she promised to find him a spouse. On the 39th day of my 3rd 40-day condition, he received the picture of his spouse, a Japanese Jacob child. 2 months later, they received the blessing and are now blessed with 2 cute little girls.
More recently, this last April, I had a chance to speak with our youngest son, a boy aged 21. His name is Wagoh. Wagoh is quite a good boy in the sense that he has never been involved in smoking, drinking or even dating but, sadly, he doesn't feel any kind of attraction towards our church. On that day, April the 3rd, which happened to be True Parents' Day he declared abruptly that: "boku to kyokai to awanai!" and when I asked him why, he answered "kyokai wa katai". I had to agree with him but, on the other hand, I knew that after a few more years he would understand better.
That evening, we said pledge with him as we were also celebrating his birthday (with 40 days delay because he was too busy) and he recited the pledge with a clear voice.
That night, I cried so much, not just quiet tears but I was sobbing for several hours.
I then decided to start a 40-day condition to read at 5 am the Divine Principle (10 pages a day for 40 days) for the sake of our children's spiritual lives. I then asked my husband whether he would be willing to do the same condition but at any convenient time for him during the day. At the end of this condition, I happened to read an article in the Today's World about the "the value of our Blessed Children" written by a Japanese brother called Yuji Otomo who is a clinical psychologist and has been counseling many first and second generation members of our movement. This article was like an answer to my condition. Among other things, Mr. Otomo was saying:" First generation members need to trust more deeply in the purity of the second generation's lineage and in the high quality of their original nature. It is not advisable to worry too much because they stop going to church or because they say they don't understand God.
In the case of first generation, if they do not attend Sunday service or do Hoon Dok Hae or are not active this may lead to a weakening of their faith but in the case of Blessed Children who are in God's domain to begin with, even without such life of faith, they can quickly return to God.
There are many other points in Mr. Otomo's article but I do not have the time to-day since the center of my message is the importance of establishing conditions of sincerity in our life of faith.
I believe that by setting conditions and realizing them, we can regain God's trust as well as the trust from the heavenly spiritual world and thereby give joy to our Heavenly Father and our True Parents who have been betrayed again and again.
I would like to end my message to-day by asking my husband to give a short testimony of his recent condition of reading the Divine Principle. I can just testify about the resurrection my husband experienced while reading the Divine Principle which he had not read for years!