Los Angeles Witnessing Team's Testimony

Tolik Kazak
April 10, 2007

Hello everyone!!! Thank you all for your hard work on the frontline. I would like to share a little bit about the LA witnessing team experience and what we could accomplish so far. Here we all know that behind our result is Heavenly Father and True Parent's efforts and love that guides us all the time. Many brothers and sisters are trying so hard to bring CIG as soon as possible and liberate Heavenly Father's and True Parent's Hearts. We started with that kind of motivation to save people to bring CIG as soon as possible.

About two months ago our "pioneer" team of 13 people went to LA to establish witnessing center. We had to start from zero. There are no CARP programs here yet and we had to just set conditions to breakthrough.

I felt like everything was spiritually prepared for us to go forward.

The community is very positive about us and we felt and experienced a lot of support. They were even ready to cancel some of their events to let our witnessing program to go on. They would, for example, cancel their high school workshop to allow our two-day workshop with guests to take place. We were very grateful to God and to the community for that. And also brothers and sisters from our team were really determined to bring victory in LA.

So first of all we felt like without good condition we cannot bring victory here. And we started to make conditions. We would wake up every morning at 4:30 am and do DP lecture practice for 21min and then we do 12 min prayer. At first it was OK and kind of exiting, but then we start to really hit our limitations. We were all were very tired.

But everybody decided to do it without any compromises. We do it everyday no matter what – if it is day off, or we went to sleep late the previous night. Everyday we did it, it became tougher and tougher, but we didn't compromise. We still do it every single day.

The first 4 day of witnessing we had no guests came for evening programs. We would prepare the program and be sitting there and waiting for the guests who promised to come, but they never showed up.

That was very disappointing at first. It made us feel little bit down.

But even though guests didn't show up we knew that spirit world came and we would still give introduction lectures – just to inspire spirit world and to fulfill our promise to Heavenly Father.

I tried to encourage brothers and sisters to hold on and pass through this test from God. We really believed that Heavenly Father was checking how determined we were. Brothers and sisters really did a good job to fight for the guest by becoming more serious and sincere in doing the conditions and loving people.

Finally on the fifth day Sakiko brought first guest. She was a lady of over 30, not a super positive person, but we were all so happy, because she was our first guest. We all totally believed that she was our match that will ignite the fire. And sure enough the next day we had a couple of guests and afterwards people started to come every single day. We actually didn't know how to organize everything, how to give the lectures that they needed. Our situation is that we can't bring guests to the place where we live, because it is True Parent's house. So our main witnessing center is a very small office, which KODAN is letting us use. Because it is very small, we can not give more then 2 lectures at a time, and we can not fit many people. But it was very happy time – to meet our guests there.

We have evening programs everyday and on Saturdays we have one day workshop or service project, or both at the same time. Everybody on the team is taking a lot of ownership over their own responsibilities and together we trying to educate our guests. The next challenge we met – how to give lectures. Not everybody was ready to give all the content guests needed to hear. So, I was very moved, how brothers and sisters put so much effort in studying and preparing for the lectures.

They could meet God by just offering their hearts to Him to talk through them, even when they didn't feel so confident to do it. I felt God really worked through them and I was very inspired to hear their lectures, and see how people were moved by it.

Our goal became to meet at least 3 spiritual children in the beginning. So far we have 4 potential guests who can understand DP deeper then others.

Last week we had 2 day workshop with our 4 guests and it was very good experience for them and for us. They all different levels but they could experience God's love on their own way.

Tokuin Hankins brought a guest called Jake. He is from China but he is very prepared to hear Divine Principle. He is very inspired and he even tries to practice it. After the workshop he started to see how everything in this world is so messed up, especially relationships between people. For him it was not easy to believe in God but after coming for our lectures he started to recognize that God exists.

Especially after the workshop he started to have dreams about us. He usually doesn't have dreams but now he has them every night and he can't sleep well. Most of the dreams he doesn't remember but I feel like spirit world is really pushing him to study the Principle.

Sun Mee Holmes has a guest called Sylvia. She is very good person and she was very inspired by the DP. But at some point she rejected us and didn't want to come anymore. We thought that she must have read something negative about us. Sun Mee really invested in her and it was really painful for her to lose Sylvia. She cried a lot. I really felt how much she loves her. But the thing is, that Sun Mee didn't give up on her and week later contacted again and Sylvia surprisingly agreed to come for the workshop. When we asked her why she didn't want to come for our lectures any more, she said that she felt really bad that since she can't come for our lecture everyday why come at all. So she is a person of promise. She didn't want to break her promise to come often. She is very busy at school that is why she can't come often.

She had a very deep experience during workshop. In the evening we had a prayer at the fire and she felt God's love and she cried in her prayer.

After parallels of history lecture she asked Sun Mee if we think that Rev. Moon is the Messiah or not. Sun Mee said yes. Sylvia had a lot of questions about the Blessing and the talked till the middle of the night.

Also we have Lesley, Francesca Pette's guest and we have Ivy, Sakiko's guest. They are also very positive and have desire to know more. Now we are in a process of developing the course of advanced lectures for them. Yesterday we had the first one. Two of our "advanced" guests, Sylvia and Lesley could participate. We talked about original value of each person, how it is connected to our relationships with God, and talked about the ways how we can meet God and make Him "our personal"

God, our closest friend. It was a very good discussion, our guests were very involved and could share their hearts. Everybody could feel free, like we are one family listening and sharing with each other.

All in all we are very grateful for everyone's prayers and support. Especially to God and True Parents, and LA community.

So let's accomplish God's dream as soon as possible.

Thank you very much.

(Last three are not part of the team anymore – Seizan and Shigeki went to conquer New York, and Melissa will shine the light of her heart in Berkely center, but they are still in our hearts!)