On Saturday, March 13, 2004, the Dayton, Ohio Family Church hosted a Divine Principle workshop. Our brother, Rev. Brian Bloch, who has built up a wonderful network of Churches in the Dayton area initiated this seminar and originally it was to be held at our dear friend and sister, Bishop Emma White's church. Around 10 days before the seminar, a van crashed into her church destroying her sanctuary. Another minister, Rev. Marvin Arnold just assumed the responsibility of offering his church and a wonderful, most inspiring workshop was held. Thirty-seven participants attended, twelve of them being ministers. The day was a wonderful display of cooperation, harmony and unity amongst different congregations as well as a spirit of effort of many of our members traveling from Cincinnati and Columbus to lecture, participate and help with the registration and food preparation.

Reverends Andre Reese, Joseph Schrattenecker, Juan Morales and Brian Bloch offered dynamic lectures that totally captured everyone's attention. During the lunch as I sat with two women, I asked how they were enjoying the workshop. One lady remarked (after just hearing the fall of man lecture) that she had heard things she had never heard before and asked the other woman if she had also believed up to now if the fruit was an actual fruit. Upon agreeing and discussing this they just accepted the lecture as new truth and were inspired by this.

A video presentation of one of the Jerusalem pilgrimages was shown and everybody seemed to be moved by the spirit of what they saw. We then held a holy wine blessing and when two couples were asked to come forth as representative couples, one minister, Rev. Simmons and his wife assumed that those were the only people who were to receive the holy wine and Rev. Simmons in a childlike expression called out, "We want to participate in this as well" and came right up front.

Bishop Emma White, who had attended several of our church events, including the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in October, 2003 and the DP seminar in Ocean City in 2002, had brought several members of her congregation. The next day at her church's Sunday service, she remarked that many of her members and in particular one minister couldn't stop talking about the seminar.

All in all, we all felt it was a huge success. The last lecture about the second coming by Rev. Bloch held no surprises as Brian explicitly spoke about True Father and how he was the one bringing all these new truths and proclaimed Rev. & Mrs. Moon as the True Parents of this age. Everyone seemed to readily accept all that was taught without any resistance. (Rev. Bloch also reflected upon how different this day and age is in preaching the truth).

Mrs. Tomiko Bloch was wonderful in coordinating all the food preparations and with just four sisters in the kitchen we managed to pull together such a wonderful lunch and received many compliments about the meal. Joshua Bloch, just 12 years old assisted me in the registration and helped watch some of the younger children as well. A few people purchased the Divine Principle book and a couple asked for applications for the future Jerusalem pilgrimages. We truly felt we brought victory to

Dayton, Ohio and are looking forward to expand and continue with future seminars. Victory to God and our True Parents!

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