Having participated to the recent 14 day Workshop on Unification Thought and VOC in Cheju-do, where Father emphasized so much our responsibility to educate the countries’ leadership, what better news could we give than this two day conference that was held in Albania on the 8th and 9th September 2001.

It’s incredibly surprising many times the way Heavenly Father carries on His Providence. Albania is the poorest country in Europe, with a GNP that can be compared surely with the Third World. It’s religious environment is mainly Muslim, due to the long colonization of the past by the Turkish. This people came out from one of the hardest communistic regime in the world, that even declared Albania as the only atheistic state in the history of the world. Because of these and few other reasons, Albania was isolated in many cases by the international community and suffered a lot due to prejudices and misunderstandings. What is possible to expect from a country with such a difficult social background and suffered course?

What we could instead verify is that God is fully working in this country in a way that you cannot see in any other country in Europe.

Furthermore recently they had a general election, that demonstrated that Albania is on the way to become a mature democracy, based on a good group of intellectuals and dedicated people that, and this is important, are very concerned about preserving the proper family tradition in their country. They are very worried about developing the economic and political system, while protecting their social system based on a strong family consciousness, from all the rubbish that started to arrive as a side effect of the globalization.

We had a quite long history of contacts and a very good record in all our activities there since the beginning of our movement. The peak was reached in a few of very meaningful events that represented the final breakthrough in our National foundation. The first was the coming of True Mother in her last world tour, when a hall was fully packed with more than 4000 people that gave her the warmest possible welcome, leaving outside something like 2000 disappointed people. To evaluate properly this result, we have to consider that Albania is a country of little more than 3 million people.

The second event was a tour in Korea, organized by the European Continental Director Pres. Kwang-Kee Sa. Twenty six dignitaries, including the Chairman of Parliament, the Vice Prime Minister, a former Prime Minister and other parliamentarians, politicians and journalists, visited True Parents country for one week. They received a one day workshop and visited most of our facilities. Welcomed and embraced perfectly by the Korean movement, whose main leaders mobilized to support wholeheartedly the tour. They could deeply realize True Parents foundation and their effort for the peace and prosperity of the world.

To come to the September conference, this was just the latest development in the process of connecting this enlightened leadership with True Parents.

We had meetings and discussions with Pres. Sa, about the way we should continue our working there. This is clearly a pioneering activity, since we didn’t have the chance until now to work on this level in any other country in Europe and we had a lot of sharing especially about the content of the teaching and the way to approach them. Pres. Sa had since quite long, the clear vision that Albania should be the door for entering Europe and decided to invest the utmost effort there. The results fully support his idea.

Among the participants there where, the new Chairman of Parliament, Mr. Namik Dokle, the former Chairman of Parliament, now Vice-Prime minister, the former prime minister and current Minister of Defense (one of the 24 in Korea), religious leaders, top journalists, MPs, academics (incl. the vice-rectors of the two main universities), leaders of NGOs, and student leaders from the highest levels. All together about 100 selected people. Actually this was our strategy: we didn’t want to have a very big number of people like in the past conferences, but selected elite, in order to improve our personal relationships and offer a more aimed education. The goal is to have a national board of high level people active in advancing God’s Providence in Albania and willing to receive True Parents on behalf of the entire country.

The content of the lectures was two folded: the most spiritual aspects, like the explanation of the Providential work of True Parents and the content of the Blessing, where extensively explained by Pres. Sa, while the educational aspects about the family, the protection and development of the new generations and the pure love teaching, where devoted to Siegfried Klammensteiner, founder of the Institute "Social Competence", Mark Bramwell, European CARP leader and Giuseppe Calì, Balkan Regional director.

The response was enthusiastic and we could collect lot of requests of cooperation and arrange future side by side activities, especially in the educational field, with the support of the Ministry of Education.

The main national TV station covered the 2nd day of the event and interviewed many of the participants. A 2-minute report on the conference was repeated several times in the TV news today, including the news which everyone watches at 8 p.m. The news clip shows the Chairman of Parliament addressing our conference saying that all things may fade away, but the family will remain. There was a 35-minute report on the conference in a popular current affairs program.

Some things the Chairman of Parliament said to our conference, which were not reported in the news: "The center of the Family Federation is family and the center of family is heart, so the central point of the Family Federation is heart. Family is most important. All good and evil starts from the family. (Quoting a traditional Albanian proverb:) The hand that rocks the crib can generate the love that moves the world. There are many federations in the world, such as the sports federations and the Russian Federation, but the best federation in the world is the Family Federation. The Family Federation creates harmonious families, based on moral values. The best families are those created by Family Federation members."

The leading authority and writer on anthropology in Albania, who is also a member of the Parliamentary Commission on Education, gave a public comment which was basically a summary of IEF teaching (30 of his students have translated the whole IEF book). He emphasized proudly that all these ideas come from Reverend Moon. He said that there have been many philosophies and ideologies in history, but this is the only philosophy which no one can oppose. In that sense, the IEF book is greater than both the Bible and the Koran. On a previous occasion, after reading the Divine Principle book, he said that he has studied many philosophies and religions, but to his knowledge, the Divine Principle is the highest of them all.

Comment from the Mufti of Elbasan: "How did you know you should invite me? I have been searching until now for such educational materials. I was struggling within myself because my mind was full of so many diverse ideas, but now I know clearly what to do. However, I ask you for assistance: I need your materials. I already have an agreement to broadcast on two TV channels. I would like to use your materials – and I will broadcast it together with the FFWPU logo." The mufti had written countless pages of copious notes on almost everything he heard at the conference.

Public Comment from the Vice-rector of Tirana University: "We should all study carefully this material and educate our youth on it as quickly as possible."

We intend to have many other meetings like this, selecting every time the best contacts, creating so a "heavenly cultural environment" that could protect and implement the global development of Albania in the direction of God’s Providence in the 4th Adam age. Waiting always to experience the joy to welcome True Parents in Albania and offer them all our gratitude for the foundation established by them in many years of sacrificing for God’s will, allowing in this way countries like Albania to receive now from them the Blessing of a new life, new possibilities for the future generations and the benefits of their True Love.

 Download entire page and pages related to it in ZIP format
Table of Contents
Information
Tparents Home