To STF Participants

In Jin Moon
June 7, 2009

The following is a message from Rev. In Jin Moon to STF participants spoken at a small gathering together after Lovin’ Life Ministries service on June 7, 2009.

I’m sure you’ve done a lot of growing in the last year, and for those of you in your second or third year it has been the last couple of years. I would like to encourage you to have a great experience while you are on STF. Find yourself, find your relationship with our Heavenly Parent, and figure out who you are. When you are done with STF, go back to your communities and your families. I am a big believer in external excellence. While you are on STF, you concentrate on internal excellence, but when you leave STF I hope that you concentrate on both the external and the internal.

I’m a mom, but I’m also a career woman. I’m always looking for great young people to work for me in different capacities. I would love to hire a Second Generation more than somebody who I might find in the outside world. I very much believe in promoting our own community. So take the same kind of spirit and dedication that you’ve experienced on STF in trying to really strengthen your internal excellence and then when you leave, commit yourself to school or to a passion that you happen to be really great at. If you give it the same kind of dedication and effort, there is no reason why you cannot be externally excellent; there is no reason why you should not be going to the best universities in America.

I very much envision, in the next ten or twenty years, Second Generation flooding Ivy League campuses around the country, assisted by scholarships and great recommendations from your teachers. The sky is the limit for what you can accomplish in your lifetime. You are so bright and so talented; your spirit is just awesome.

One of the things that employers like myself always look for in the people we hire is a great attitude. Of course we want the best grades and good recommendations in terms of your character, but the single most important thing that we always look for is attitude. To have a really great attitude in working with people, you have to be fun loving. I don’t like hiring people who are just boring; I like to hire people who have a lot of energy, who are fun to be with. Such people tend to be the stars in the workforce, regardless of the field. So work on yourself, but please concentrate in school.

In this economic recession, even the best students who are graduating from Harvard Law School who would normally be guaranteed a six-figure salary from the get-go are getting deferred a year because it’s just so tough. So college-level graduation is the bare minimum, and then it would be a good idea to have a little bit more in terms of graduate studies. And if you happen to be really bright, then I would definitely encourage you to get a PhD in the area of your choice.

It is really quite competitive out there. I don’t want the really talented pool of Second Generation to think that the only thing that is important in life is to be spiritually excellent, and that’s all that’s needed. That’s a very important thing. But when you start walking down the aisle headed towards the Blessing, you will start thinking about how you can support your family and how you can raise decent kids. All of these things, if you want to do them properly, take money and some sort of financial foundation. In preparing yourself by trying your best in school, you are preparing yourself for an excellent life when you become a Blessed couple and a family.

So please take the time that you need, maybe gap year. A lot of European students take a gap year in between high school and college to find themselves. STF is like a gap year, extended up to three years for a lot of people. The single most important thing is knowing who you are. If you know who you are, then there is a lot of good work you can do in putting yourself out there to interface with the world and be an ambassador of God, True Parents, and our community. Sometimes staying within the fold for one, two, or three years with the same type of people is comfortable, but we as a movement need to get ourselves out there and let people know how awesome we really are.

So for those of you who will be staying on, I wish you the best. But for those of you who are going back, please try your best at school. There is no reason why you should not be getting straight A’s. The only reason I can think of is maybe you want to dance a little bit more, or maybe you just want to have a little fun or spend time with your friends. But studying is very important. I’m sure the men in this room understand the importance of weight lifting. You want strength, so you condition. But the brain is a muscle, too. Just as we exercise our heart in practicing the application of living for the sake of others, we have to exercise the brain in order to become capable, and effective people. Don’t neglect your mind.

The mind is probably one of the greatest gifts that God has given us, and we need to develop it. Just like pumping iron, we need to pump our brains by doing well at school, becoming star students, and learning how to work with our peers, even getting elected as the school president. There are a lot of good things that the outside offers that I don’t want our community to throw out. Just because we want to be spiritually excellent doesn’t mean we have to throw out everything that is good that the outside world offers. We have to learn how to integrate the best of the internal and the external and truly become the incredible people that all of us will be, can be, and should be.

After Rev. In Jin Moon spoke, she asked each attendee to share with her and the rest of the room about who they were and what they wanted to do in the future. Each participant received a wonderful opportunity to greet her as well as express themselves with sharings of their passions. By the end, many were in tears and thankful for the time they were able to share.