The Words of the Thaveetermaskul Family
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The Words of the Thaveetermaskul Family |
From the closing month of last year until Foundation Day, members in Thailand, a small number of people among FFWPU-Thailand's 1,457 members, brought to a one-day workshop more than five thousand guests and blessed 2,800 couples. With the intention of creating a model for moving from public blessings to genuine membership in a blessed family, in one of the earliest Inter-religious Blessing Festivals, those in charge persuaded eighty couples to begin a forty-day separation just after their blessing. When those couples finished this separation, forty-eight of them chose to attend a three-day workshop at the UPF and FFWPU headquarters in Bangkok. Among the forty-eight, seventeen opted to do the workshop in the daylight hours and their Three-Day Ceremony at night. The main person behind that particular Blessing Ceremony, vice-chairman of UPF Asia and former- Thai national leader, Dr. Lek Thaveetermsakul, described this as a "pilot project, so that we can find a successful model and continue to inspire all the others that received the blessing to following in those footsteps."
Thai members had undergone a long period of relative turbulence before their recent dramatic successes, but all the while they were consistently investing themselves and their organization was maturing. In the late 1980s, the church was becoming increasingly active. Membership rapidly increased, which made nervous those who did not know our church or our members well. After a political change, the media, led by one newspaper, maligned our church. In the hostile atmosphere that the newspaper's wild accusations created for our members, church leaders were suddenly arrested. Dr. Lek Thaveetermsakul, more commonly known simply as Dr. Lek (national leader 1988-2005) and his wife Vipa were among eight Thai members imprisoned in the main prison facility in Bangkok from June 26, 1991 to March 17, 1993. When Father was first told about their incarceration, he said, "Through the sacrifice of eight people in prison, the victory over evil power will be won. Don't worry; we will win, but it will take time." It did indeed take time. Final, Supreme Court, victory came only eighteen months ago.
In spite of their being enmeshed in drawn-out court proceedings, the Thai members and their allies started FFWPU and other organizations in 1997. The first president of FFWPU and UPF in Thailand (1997-2000) was a medical doctor and professor who had already had a distinguished career in public service going back decades. Dr. Krasae Chanawongse, now in his late seventies, had been a deputy minister of public health and minister of foreign affairs among other posts and was (as recently as 2002) an advisor to the Thai prime minister.
Through FFWPU, UPF, WFWP and associated organizations, the Thai movement gained increasing recognition from government, voluntary civic and social organizations, the public and the United Nations, through the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), which is located in Bangkok, the Thai capital. They did many projects with UNESCAP, especially on days the UN wished to highlight, such as the International Day of Families.
Nearly 80 percent of Thailand's 70 million people are ethnically Thai. Chinese, Malay and Khmer people essentially make up the remainder. The country is 94 percent Buddhist, five percent Sunni Muslim (in the three most southern provinces, near Malaysia) and 1 percent Christian.
At a presentation given to the World National Leaders Assembly 2013 by Dr. Lek and Rev. Kamol Thananopavarn, the national leader of FFWPU-Thailand, Dr. Lek explained that their establishing of the Inter-religious Peace Council, in line with Father's vision for a bicameral United Nations, was crucial preparation for the recent Interfaith Peace Blessing Festivals. "We got agreement from the top," he said, "from the minister of culture in charge of religion and the top religious leaders of four or five of the main religions in Thailand, who joined the inauguration. We broke down religious barriers, so the blessing festivals become an interfaith activity. We invited religious leaders to the festivals and they even signed a declaration in front of the public."
Harmonious interaction between UPF and FFWPU is essential to approaching the Thai public with the Peace Blessing Fesrtivals. It is a peace movement and a movement to strengthen families, two aims that transcend religious affiliation. The focus is on peace and joy within families, communities and the nation.
It is Dr. Lek's assessment that Regional President Yong's decision to hold an Interfaith Peace Blessing in Mindanao was a key to success throughout the Philippines. Succeeding at holding a peace-themed event in the most dangerous part of the country brought broad public approval of the event throughout the Philippines. Inspired by this, FFWPU and UPF Thailand held an event in Hat Yai City in southern Thailand, with the support of the Hat Yai mayor. Those that participated in the event went through a half-day of education. Hat Yai is in a Muslim-majority province where members of a separatist movement have committed numerous acts of violence, through which (cumulatively) several thousand people have been killed over the last decade.
The Blessing Festival was highly successful. Buddhist and Muslim families sat down to discuss issues and participated in the Blessing Ceremony harmoniously. Though no one from FFWPU-Thailand had invited Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawarta, word reached her about the event and she worried about what might transpire in a region that is often on the nightly news because of attacks and bombings. "She sent a representative to observe our conference," Dr. Lek explained. "We received top-level support from UNESCO, the National Assembly of Thailand, the King Prajadhipok Institute (which is under the Thai Parliament) the Southern Province Administration Center and the government of the local Songkhla Province. They welcomed UPF but also the Interfaith Peace Blessing." In the midst of a much troubled region, God could reach 1,100 couples through the Blessing Ceremony.
In 2008, when Dr. Lek ceased being the national leader, he was encouraged to set an example as a successful tribal messiah, to bless the 430 couples that True Parents had set as the standard of success in that mission. Toward that end, he and his wife turned their rented home into a tribal mission center. They began by visiting high schools in northern Thailand and presenting a one-day Pure Love and Ideal Family Seminar. Many students in that area would appreciate the opportunity to study in Bangkok, a more developed part of their country. From the students who took part in the one-day seminar, they recruited hundreds of young people to attend a Pure Love and Ideal Family Camp for two-day and five-day workshops. They had prospective students not only attend workshops but also take part in community service work. They then screened and selected only pure, self-motivated students with good character to live with them and study in Bangkok after graduating from high school in what became known as the "Ideal Youth Training Program: Guiding High School Students to Healthy University Life." More than a hundred students were adopted into their home through that process. The Thaveetermsakuls have had to rent an additional six houses to contain them all. They are in the process now of finding a hundred more students. Thus far, they have found seventy. In addition to secular schooling, the students go through a regimen of Divine Principle seminars, up to twenty-one day workshops. They also participate in many activities with full-time members.
The Thaveetermsakuls' initial plan was to continue down this course, with the expectation that after four years of college their charges would go through the matching and blessing process.
Based on the direction given by True Mother and with inspiration coming from Regional President Chong Sik Yong, Dr. Lek and his wife had the sense that they needed to do something before Foundation Day arrived. They were apparently mulling over what to do, when as Dr. Lek said, "Dr. Yong asked me to try to set some example of breaking through with the 430 couples. I'm so grateful to him now." In November, they resolved to fulfill this in early December -- specifically, in the first two days of the month.
They sent the young people that they had adopted, who come from twenty different provinces, to visit their families and to persuade their parents and relatives to take part in the Interfaith Peace Blessing Festivals. They chose Khon Kaen as the best site in northern Thailand for the families to converge at for the Blessing Ceremony. They spent a month preparing. All 650 couples that attended the blessing went through a one-day workshop and each received As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen. Subsequent education is ongoing. Despite the relatively brief workshops that preceded the Blessing Ceremonies, all who took part in the ceremonies were told the significance of the Holy Wine and Holy Water. The also learned the meaning of the Indemnity Stick Ceremony. At first it was described as a "family relationship activity," but once the details were explained, people were able to see the value (or at least the lighter side) of this unusual tradition. Additionally, married couples planning to take part were encouraged to go through a forty-day separation after the Blessing Ceremony. At each preparatory workshop, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon were presented to the participants as the True Parents of All Humanity, the Messiah and the returning Buddha. Because Dr. Lek and his wife had adopted the children of the participants, it was as if they were guiding their own relatives.
The example set by Dr. Lek and his wife set off a surge of Interfaith Peace Blessing Festivals of a similar size in various areas of Thailand. Other members were determined to reach the 430-couple tribal messiah standard before Foundation Day, despite a lack of financial resources and in most cases, an absence of a John-the-Baptist figure to help introduce them to the community. Through their sincere determination and effort, Heaven provided the ingredients necessary to reach their aims.
Interfaith Peace Blessing Festivals that neared or exceeded that tribal messiah required number of couples took place in the northeastern sector of Thailand (wedged between Laos and Cambodia) on December 2 in Khon Kaen (Dr. Lek's tribe); Thatum Surin, December 16; Khao Wong District, January 25; and Roi Et City on February 2. A Blessing Festival took place in the far northwest city of Chang Mai (about 130 kilometers from Burma) on December 23 and in the far southern peninsular arm of Thailand in the city of Hat Yai (mentioned earlier) a hundred kilometers from the northernmost Malaysian city of Alor Setar.
We can learn much from the Thai movement. Under the harshest conditions, eight key members endured hardships in prison while the whole movement endured being characterized as members of a pariah religion, social outcasts. During times of lesser stress, the organization was banned but the members maintained dignity and acted in an open and honest manner as the sons and daughters of God and True Parents. Now that the worst times are behind FFWPU-Thailand, it is blossoming and the members are reuniting the lost children of their nation with the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind.